Hozier: “Not Cringe, but Getting Cringe-er” | SOTW 11/01/2024

Happy September from November, everyone! As is the current Songs of the Week standard, we’re about a month late on the release of this post about music I’ve been wanting to talk about for two to five months before that. Like some bloated bureaucracy, the system fails Max Todd Dot Com enjoyers at every juncture, and yet this wretched machine churns glacially on.

KING’S LEAD HAT | Brian Eno If I was to name the quintessential musician’s musician—your favorite artist’s actual favorite artist—who else could it be but Brian Eno? Though his solo work goes largely unknown, Eno arguably invented the sound of seventies post-punk and beyond, from Bowie’s Berlin trilogy, to Devo, to a long legacy of uptight artists like The Feelies or Chris Knox. It’s hard not to conceptualize this signature sound as singular—especially when his solo stuff, which we discussed last time, is the most Eno anyone’s ever Eno’d—but even signatures evolve with influences, and even your favorite musician’s favorite musician, has, in turn, their own favorite musicians. That’s right—I found a way to make this silly song pretentious.

Surprisingly, my personal illusion of Eno’s stable, unchanging sound only encompasses a six-year, four-album period—‘72-‘78—and even then, there’s audible warping on either end. Continuing to appear where I least expect him, Eno was the guitarist for gaudy glamrock group Roxy Music prior to his solo foray, which isn’t shocking in itself until one hears how flamboyantly Frank-N-Furter singer Bryan Ferry sounds (I’ll just leave “Mother of Pearl” and “Sweet Transvestite” here and let you do the rest). It’s a pretty stark contrast with Eno’s, uh, neurotically straight style (I don’t even mean that derogatorily, he’s just uptight), but if Ferry’s post-Roxy solo career is anything to go by, Eno was almost certainly responsible for the weirdness in this era, however theatrical. While the glittery side of his glam leanings were fairly dormant in the following solo period, this theatricality rose again in 1977’s Before and After Science. More aptly, I think, this album has hints of both before and after Bowie, with tracks like “No One Receiving” hinting that their collaboration was far more symbiotic than one-sided. Bowie, however, was just the bleeding edge of the New Wave that would alter Eno’s music from here on—even the most post-punk piece I’ve heard from Before and After Science, “King’s Lead Hat,” signals change on the horizon. If you’re more perceptive than me, you might’ve noticed that this nonsense title—which, to be fair, is absolutely on-brand—is actually an anagram for a then up-and-coming band: “Talking Heads.” Eno, once again on brand, was already a fan before it was cool, and would soon produce their sophomore album, More Songs About Buildings and Food, with his new-New Wave sensibilities. Despite being every bit as quirky as the Talking Heads deserve, their namesake song is oddly peak Eno—the jingliest, jangliest, pots-and-pans freakout I’ve yet to hear from his catalogue.

I’m prone to hyperbole, but I could tack on more whimsical adjectives and not be exaggerating—despite its uptightness, “King’s Lead Hat” is somehow also frantic, chaotic, and even a little cracked out. Ever the magician of pop composition, Eno is able to cram so much avant-garde discordance into jog-tempo pop beat that’s easy to bop along to. Much as I love me a crunchy guitar riff, it’s these bells and whistles (literally) that sell the song, from percussion like opening the dishwasher too fast to piano tweaking with the spirit of Jerry Lee Lewis. No, really, it sounds like a muppet bangin’ on the piano, and I know that because there are several muppets up to the challenge. Maybe more aptly, it could be a combo of the two—in trying to imagine Eno’s muppet band, I realized I was picturing Sesame Street’s parodic piano piece “Eight Balls of Fur,” which may well be one of my earliest memories. When I hear “King’s Lead Hat,” I see that purple pianist shredding so hard that the keys go flying—and yes, he still has glasses but no eyes. Oh, and don’t tell me “Splish-Splash, I was raking in the cash” doesn’t sound like something some scummy muppet would say.

This digression isn’t even a dead end, either, because the lyrics really are all that awesome, even if they’re predictably impenetrable. Like with “Burning Airlines Give You So Much More” [Reviewed 05/31/2024], there’s some solid soundplay here, like “The lacquer crackles (black tar),” “smelly Delhi,” and one of my favorites, “The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface”—hey, wait, are these lyrics dabbling in… meaning?! That’s right, though I can’t seem to make heads or tails of “King’s Lead Hat” as a larger story, that’s my fault this time, because a lot of these lines mean… something. Whether it’s witty innuendos like “draw bananas on the bathroom walls” or postmodern ponderings like “The passage of my life is measured out in shirts” (which doubles as a sobering callout to graphic tee hoarders, who I wouldn’t know the least bit about), there’s undeniably something underneath the willy-nilly.

As solidly rockin’ (solid as a rock) as this outing was, Before and After Science ended up being Eno’s fourth and final rock album to date. Since then, he’s continued to be prolific as both a producer and a musician, skewing ever more towards the experimental style that’s undoubtedly authentic to his inner landscape. As I’ve often said, I’m all about musicians aging into unique styles, but if you still miss this Eno as much as I do, perhaps it’ll be a comfort to know that he isn’t opposed to revisiting older work. Just one year later, his side project Eno Moebius Roedilius (collaborators Moebius and Roedilius being from the band Cluster) released a surreal, atmospheric track called “Tzima N’Arki” which, if reversed, reveals the lyrics to “King’s Lead Hat.” An anagram first, and then a reversal—it really makes me wonder what else “King’s Lead Hat” could be hiding, but its mystery certainly isn’t the reason I’ve replayed this song into oblivion. That’d be the muppetiness.

Pairs Well With: “Baggy Trousers” (Madness), “Hey Chicken” (Loose Fur) [Reviewed 05/05/2023], “Great Balls of Fire” (Jerry Lee Lewis)

SYMBOL | Adrianne Lenker Since her first Songs of the Week feature (Songs! Of! The! Week! Max! Todd! Dot! Com!) this time two years ago, I’ve been through quite the Adrianne Lenker slow-burn. From being skeptical of her acoustic folk stripped from Big Thief’s occasional weirdness, I eventually learned to love her masterful lyricism, and today, she’s finally climbed into the pantheons of both my favorite singers and guitarists. I certainly don’t owe her any more skepticism after that arc, but when my girlfriend bought tickets to see an Adrianne Lenker solo show this past June, I was still foolishly uncertain that she’d be able to carry a show alone. That’s no shade towards Lenker as a performer—like we spoke on with Lizzy McAlpine last time, when it comes to live music, I’m just often more awed by the balancing act of an entire band maintaining an atmosphere (or, less pretentiously, loud noise boom boom?), and no ordinary musician can ensnare a whole audience with one instrument. Going with Emily would’ve been worth it regardless to be there while she saw one of her all-time heroes, but boy, am I glad I went so that I can eat my doubts now—no ordinary musician can ensnare a whole audience with one instrument, yes, but Adrianne Lenker is no ordinary musician. Her sit-down performance at the Mission Ballroom was nothing short of spellbinding, and while I’m glad to have seen some personal favorites rendered so enchantingly, I’m even happier to have found my new favorite Adrianne Lenker song performed live first.

From her third studio album abysskiss, “symbol” might actually be everything I’ve wanted from Lenker’s work in the format I’d least expected it. While she always bares her soul unflinchingly bright, Lenker’s solo music often first strikes me as sparse—an aesthetic that certainly suits the rawness of her more specific, confessional songs, but which, in lesser hands, might fall short of the sublimity her lyrics sometimes touch on. I’m not saying spirituality can’t come from an acoustic guitar, but I certainly wouldn’t expect it strummed from a I–V–vi–IV progression alone. However, as a musical illiterate, I didn’t realize Adrianne Lenker was such an effortlessly fluent guitar-bender until I saw her finger-picking firsthand. In her hands, every string is its own member of the band, playing alternating sections while the last three notes are still lingering in the air. “symbol” is the best specimen of this spellbinding effect I’ve yet heard from her, with a melody that pitter-patters like a millipede’s pulsing legs while the lower strings, plucked almost simultaneously, sound like an entirely separate bass track. Though the recorded version features muted, raindrop percussion, the guitar still acts as the dominant drum, thrumming so steadily that it casts a metronome’s shadow where there is none beneath (this version hopefully shows what I mean). Upon closer inspection, the song’s whole skeleton is a cyclical illusion—Lenker defies expectations by making one melody, one instrument, sound like three, then defies again by weaving these perceived three into one piece. Seen live, it was almost like witnessing musical juggling, especially since Lenker decided to flex and perform “symbol” faster than usual.

How appropriate, then, that a song so tied up in timing expresses love’s transcendence through time. As usual, Lenker’s not slacking in the lyrics department, which means I’ll have to resist just copying and pasting the whole song instead of highlighting single lines. If I had to pick a phrase that this song translates flawlessly to sound, it’d be between “Counting time as time counts me, the river to the island” or “Do you see circling through? / That's how one returns from two.” Though I’ve seen the latter likened to a clock face, in context, this (to me) reads as a patient observation of relationships over time—while healthily in love, two people can often feel themselves cyclically becoming closer to one being, which in turn initiates greater understanding of themselves as two separate individuals. As the song rolls on hypnotically, it’s hard not to be entranced by this superposition of “river” and “island”—a musical high only possible because of its rich atmosphere.

Now, I don’t want to raise any folky indietheys’ blood pressure here, but in capturing a chunk of musical soul that I enjoy wherever it crops up, I’ve accidentally connected “symbol” to some surprising and controversial corners of my music taste. Obviously, this piece is a dead ringer for Kristin Hersh’s solo music (though you can also hear her spectral voice in Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave), from its gravity-defying guitar to Hersh’s trance-inducing voice, but these traits also bridge to a feminine force whose magic skews a bit witchier. I recently paired “symbol” with Chelsea Wolfe’s “Mer” [Reviewed 08/23/2024] because both songs seem to roll, but though I listened to them back to back for weeks, I think we can narrow “symbol’s” official pairings down a little closer—even if it means getting weirder. It makes me feel a little less crazy that my dad and I came to this comparison independently, but I’ve gotta admit—“symbol” sounds a lot like Radiohead. Especially unfocused from Lenker’s signature vocals and instrumentation, “symbol” shares a lot of the skittering, percussive sounds and complex rhythms that make late-stage Radiohead and spinoff band The Smile tick. You gotta bear with me on this one, but if you strip down Radiohead to something gentler and impressionistic—like, I don’t know, this lullaby version of “Paranoid Android” by Rockabye Baby—the similarities really start to stand out. In truth, I’ve been struggling to find a 1:1 pairing (probably because I keep getting distracted—did I just finish listening to Kid A straight through? Am I crying to the King of Limbs From the Basement performance of “Bloom?” Where was I?), despite hearing pieces of “Symbol” in so much of not just Radiohead’s discography, but also their associated band members. From Radiohead themselves, “symbol” wavers between the uncertainty of “In Limbo” in its verses and the clarity of “Optimistic” in its key-changed chorus, but neither on their own sound close as pairings. However, where “In Limbo” is murky, The Smile’s more recent “The Same” [Reviewed 01/04/2023] captures the darkness that lurks in “symbol’s” lowest notes. Part of me hears similarities to vocalist Thom Yorke’s style, particularly the clicky percussion that pervades much of his solo music, but that would disregard the more comparable, jangling instrumentation in songs like Radiohead’s “Little By Little,” from an album that (as far as I can tell) was largely the brainchild of bassist Colin Greenwood. We’ll go with “Little by Little” as our best pairing, but really, there’s a whole smattering of Radiohead & Co. unintentionally (?) synthesized by Lenker that can’t really be represented by one pairing. This was a fun little departure, wasn’t it?

Pairs Well With: “Velvet Days” (Kristin Hersh), “Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart” (Chris Cornell), “Little by Little” (Radiohead)

GLOW | Alice Phoebe Lou Song two of several from Emily today, because either she or her spotify was absolutely carrying back in, um, June and I’ve been too lazy to thank her since then. Though I can’t say I know anything from South African vocalist and strongboi member Alice Phoebe Lou, her sound felt delightfully, drearily familiar—like getting a second first listen to Crumb’s “Locket.” It feels like forever’s passed since I’ve clicked with any indie-bedroom-dream-pop fare, on account of being just another snide internet motherfucker who chronically can’t like anything. Like the cycle of the seasons, indie lo-fi emerges to compensate for overproduced pop, only to lose its homemade earnestness as it becomes an aesthetic, which makes overproduced maximalism look virtuosic and detail-oriented in comparison—what do you know, we’ve drawn a sloppy circle from trends chasing honest artists. Right now, I feel we’ve found ourselves in the later stages of lo-fi oversaturation—a time when this sound reflects not the artists’s homemade determination with limited resources, but their marketability as your chill, vibey buddy who smokes weed and wears beanies. The great thing about culture, though, is that it’s never monolithic, and I’ll always admit it when someone falls outside my doom-and-gloom-timeline. Crumb, for example, does dreampop well because it only informs their atmosphere—I’d say their composition itself leans far closer to jazz, and their psychedelic style smears together these otherwise disparate axes. While Alice Phoebe Lou’s “Glow” doesn’t go anywhere near as experimental as Crumb (not everyone needs to be so unabashedly Brooklyn), its drums and bass stagger into imaginative pre-psychedelia (you know, right before the edible hits). For such a fuzzy atmosphere—aptly named, I think—“Glow’s” melody isn’t shy, driven by bold bass and skittering drums that go above and beyond for the genre. Alice Phoebe Lou here puts the “pop” back into dreampop, imbuing the genre’s polaroid nostalgia with a beat that grips better than memory, and though I can’t always tell which instruments are being layered, she builds an inconspicuous crescendo amidst the calm that gives me pretty un-chill chills. I can’t explain exactly how, but “Glow” hits a few coveted moments where its lyrics, instruments, and progression synch seamlessly—the way the drums stutter-step during “My mom knows I'll be alright, but she'll be glad I'm home / She's always casting spells for me” or the way the whole song seems to release at “I swim out / of the window and into the night / I am smiling, I am screaming, I am glowing from inside / Do I dare to feel this feeling” really scratches an inexplicable itch for me. See? I’m not too pretentious to enjoy cleverly-constructed pop. Wait, that sounded pretentious. Let me try again.

Pairs Well With: “Bones” (Crumb), “Show Me How” (Men I Trust), “Multiply” (Dora Jar) [Reviewed 08/25/2023]

NOBODY’S SOLDIER | Hozier While I got “Glow” from my girlfriend and immediately liked it in earnest, I’d be lying if I said I was always immediately cozy with Hozier. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve honestly enjoyed the four or five of his songs I’ve spotlighted—but it’s unlikely I’d have come to his music on my own. I love art, and I love my girlfriend even more, so it’s important to me that I understand why her favorite art is important to her—to me, it’s a key part of knowing someone. That’s how I’ve come to appreciate Hozier’s poeticism, emotional intelligence, and affinity for the mythological—not to mention his willingness to go spooky when the occasion calls for it (though I think I’ve heard the occasion calling way more often than he has). Still, I feel a little disingenuous reporting back this secondhand resonance—though there’s plenty of his songs I straight-up enjoy, this is often preceded by a period of wariness that, I’ll begrudgingly admit, does in part consist of kissing my self-righteous indie status goodbye. Today, I wanted to make an honest effort to talk about a new Hozier song that unabashedly hooked me, but after that no-good period of wariness, I’ve come to realize my review will probably come off as demeaning if I don’t come clean about the musical guilty pleasures that unwittingly lead me to like “Nobody’s Soldier.” You might call it a kind of psychological slip, but I’m not gonna dignify it with the F word. One syllable, rhymes with “annoyed.” Or maybe “opioid?”

Being the second EP collecting unreleased Unreal Unearth material, it would be frankly criminal if Unaired didn’t somehow mirror its preceding EP Unheard, and luckily for our pattern-sensing primate brains, Hozier does not disappoint. From its opening rip of guitar—like a horror gliss on a fuzz pedal—“Nobody’s Soldier” makes dual declarations. On the one hand, it’s not your mama’s Hozier, yet with such polished production and sticky progression, it’s so very mama-marketable, which interestingly positions it as a dark twin to Unheard’s often-heard “Too Sweet.” Now soured by going wildfire viral, I don’t think it’d be a leap to say “Too Sweet” might be Hozier’s most ubiquitous hit since “Take Me to Church,” and even more so, it’s his most distinctly pop piece. In this regard, “Nobody’s Soldier” is a close cousin—though the distortion’s been kicked up, this song still has pop in its rock, especially when Hozier’s harmonies break through the clouds in the chorus. “Nobody’s Soldier” doesn’t just sound angrier, however—while “Too Sweet” shot for shallower waters lyrically, this track is overtly antiwar in opposition to internet echo chambers and a disturbing reminiscence for a fictional time when all men were warriors. I’m a sucker for this kind of duality between twin EPs—when opening tracks are simultaneously drawing from the same energy and also commenting on each other—but “Nobody’s Soldier” struck me first without any of this context, so I think it’s worth judging on its own terms. When I say Hozier should get edgier, I’m usually talking about going goth, but this dip into harder rock is still plenty welcome—that dagger guitar and the fat bass chugging under it could easily pass for a Royal Blood or Happy Fangs riff. Royal Blood in particular really is running through this sound, down to the smooth harmonies slicked over crunchy guitar (see “Lights Out” for an uncannily similar chorus), so much so that I wonder if Hozier was directly inspired. Either way, he’s made a bold, black, and blue sound that wades into a sleek darkness with a predictable structure as its safety line. That last part might sound critical, but whether or not this song’s hook was purposefully safe (though I suspect it was, after “Too Sweet’s” sweeping success), I was honestly snared from the first listen. No matter what my music taste grows to encompass, the fifteen year old in me will never say no to a little edge, and that’s just as important as any of my hifalutin opinions.

Okay. Now it’s hifalutin opinion time.

As with all calculated pop—that is to say, sales-motivated music that’s strategically parroting a trendy aesthetic—the edge is wearing down fast, and I’m worried what was once cool about “Nobody’s Soldier” might soon go the grating way of “Too Sweet.” Much as I once loved Happy Fangs or Royal Blood (though I will say the latter seems to be doing Hozier numbers from their… um… disco-inspired pivot? I really oughta do more wellness checks on my high school friends…), they both sometimes sound like they started with the edgy aesthetic and then made music to match it. After finding out my mom didn’t like Happy Fangs (circa 2015), I asked her why, and her response—“they sound like a teen clothing commercial”—has forever changed the way I look at a song like this. Once its luster wears off, there comes a reckoning after enough replays reveal the skeleton beneath any style: will its substance—emotion or craft—keep us listening, or will it crumble to a background annoyance? Of course, it’s not all black and white—I’m going a little hard on Royal Blood here, for example, but I think I could still listen to their full first album without a single skip—but I think many listeners can only subsist on cheese for so long without any meat to dig into.

In Hozier’s case, his antiwar ethos should theoretically prove there’s potential longevity in “Nobody’s Soldier,” but as punchy as this protest song sounds, in my opinion, one unpolished face fumbles its potency hard. Maybe it’s unfair to judge a song by its music video, but in the case of “Nobody’s Soldier,” I think it only takes a highlighter to some preexisting cracks. Guys, I really hate to say it, but this video is super fuckin’ unsubtle—like, I know I’m the unsubtle pot calling the kettle unsubtler, and I really wanna be nice about an antiwar song for god’s sake, but seriously? “Sales” written on a bomb? “Collateral” written on a baby shoe? And the comments are like, “we love an emotionally intelligent artistic genius.” “Using the collateral baby doll body parts to put together soldier dolls is the perfect visual metaphor.” Like, shit, if you guys like that, then you’re gonna love Ben Garrison cartoons—no surface unlabeled, no metaphor unturned. Look, I know how harsh this sounds, and I know I gotta take it if I dish it out, but this rings about as “deep” as a fourteen-year-old’s facebook. It’s not so much this quality in itself that’s embarrassing, but more the fact that it’s coming from a lauded lyricist like Hozier. Again, this is far from the most tone-deaf antiwar statement of our time, but from a man who wields such literary words—whose music touches the hearts of thousands—I’d expect something more educational, more mythological, more actionable. To quote Emily’s diagnosis: “Hozier isn’t cringe, but he’s getting cringe-er.”

You know, this really reminds me of some other poetic, antiwar, Irish musicians whose original impact deadened with increasing popularity….

Incidentally, the best pairing for “Nobody’s Soldier” works so well because it’s something of a historical and musical mirror: “Get On Your Boots,” deemed one of U2’s worst songs in the court of public opinion. In my last U2 review, we discussed the band’s modern status as something of a punching back in part simply because they were popular for so long—suffering from success, as it were—but even some of their later music has plenty of rock merit. Hypocritically, I’d argue “Get On Your Boots” easily falls into this category because, uh… it rocks… though I completely understand why its Katy Perry-esque approach to satire didn’t land quite like fans raised on “Sunday Bloody Sunday” might expect. In this sense, “Nobody’s Soldier” deserves some redemption—political commentary can’t all be depressing if you want to keep people listening, but paradoxically, taking a lighter tone doesn’t always necessitate shedding weight. Looking back on this aspect of U2’s fall from public favor has, in a way, helped me rationalize liking “Nobody’s Soldier” as it slips into becoming a guilty pleasure (which, in itself, makes me feel guilty). I always try not to feed negativity online, but in this case, perhaps it’s not productive for me to feel embarrassed for liking what I like, even if “what I like” has its flaws. Upon closer examination, I’m not feeling embarrassed for liking “Nobody’s Soldier—” I’m feeling embarrassed for “Nobody’s Soldier” knowing that the self-same talent that hooked my attention could’ve done so much more with this piece. That said, only unaired songs get redos, so we might as well listen to the flawed things we’ve got—and even in my hallowed music library, I’ve got quite a few flawed things. Not to brag, but I kind of nailed it with the pairings for “Nobody’s Soldier,” and all three play great back to back. Plus, in the process of revisiting some of this stuff, I also stumbled across this hysterical music video for the Happy Fangs’s “Controlled Burn,” and it’s gleefully awful. Please enjoy.

Pairs Well With: “Lights Out” (Royal Blood), “Controlled Burn” (Happy Fangs), “Get On Your Boots” (U2)

SATELLITE OF LOVE | Lou Reed So, not that serial killers aren’t allowed to have good taste, but I feel like someone owes Lou Reed’s already-grimy Transformer a little rinse after getting lumped into Longlegs for seemingly no reason. Like, you guys know I’ll make all sorts of excuses for strange stylistic choices, but I just don’t get what all that glam-rock had to do with anything—when the connections are so tenuous, it almost feels as if Longlegs (in so many ways) is simply lifting Silence of the Lambs’s cross-dressing, makeup-caked killer without thought for what it might mean in a symbolic context. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about Longlegs, and I’m not sure I’ll have the time to dive into the full Stories of the Month review I’ve got stowed away in my drafts, but for now, let’s at least give Lou some distance from Nick Cage’s muggy doll basement.

In truth, a lot of Transformer tracks have been on the brain, and as usual, it’s been tough to pick a favorite. The sudden, unstoppable wall of harmony in “Walk on the Wild Side” always knocks the wind out of me (I’m trying to diversify the way I say “crying”), but I figured that song’s already been talked to death. Luckily, Transformer’s chock full of these rickety, delicate declarations barely bridling the cosmic passion bucking beneath, and as far as favorites go, “Satellite of Love” is tied for first. For such rugged guitar and raw vocals, “cosmic” really is the only word I know that captures much of Reed’s emotionality in this era, and what that generally means musically is contrast so strong that it leaves a gulf between: high highs, low lows, and the universe implied in the middle. In religious hymnals or space soundtracks like in Interstellar, this happens quite literally by harmonizing the highest and lowest notes of the orchestra, but in “Satellite of Love,” this juxtaposition is all over the place. For such a street-level musician, there’s some really odd instrumentation here that I’ve never stopped to examine until now—with its Christmasy “bom bom boms” in the chorus and baroque pipes right after, there’s a misplaced whimsy here that, much like “Perfect Day,” could actually sound joyous if you weren’t really listening (and as a serial lyric misser, that’s absolutely valid). Of course, these surface sprinkles smear like spotty, Longlegs mascara over Reed’s note-missing, heart-twisting vocals—once again like “Perfect Day,” no amount of cracked smiles can hide his crippling pain.

Of course, the yuck’s sort of guaranteed with Reed—I mean, this is day one orientation sort of stuff, right after name tags and icebreakers—but I like to think I’ve acclimated to this fella’s brand, that being “My roommate’s a corpse and I just found out my hooker’s got a dick, but it’s cool because I’m used to sharing needles.” I’m paraphrasing, but, you know… not that much. What I wasn’t expecting was for “Satellite of Love” to be roughin’ it so much more simply—and somehow, it hurts all the more. Beginning its life as a Velvet Underground track to coincide with the space race, this song’s beautiful bitterness somehow redirects one of mankind’s crowning achievements towards personal despair, because when we’re in the shit, don’t we all tend to dwell? Here, the song’s narrator does his best to be distracted by a satellite launch on TV, yet as this object leaves Earth—its only womb, its only home, the only life it’s ever known—for empty, barren Mars, he can’t help but be consumed by what Reed calls “the worst kind of jealousy,” reminded inevitably of his girlfriend’s infidelity. There’s that juxtaposition again—watching humans take their historic first steps into the stars, yet slumping back to Earth because his baggage is too heavy.

To me, the metaphor of the unfaithful satellite is already brilliant, but at three and a half minutes of mostly repeated chorus, this song’s lyrics leave leeway for much more meaning—meaning I’m not sure even Reed was fully aware of. Even without the linear symbology saying “satellite equals cheating girlfriend,” the scene itself plays out like it’s been lived—lyrics like “Satellite's gone way up to Mars / Soon it'll be filled with parking cars” are so layered with playfulness, cynicism, and that aforementioned jealousy all while sounding exactly like the thoughts of someone desperately trying to distract themselves. Even Reed himself, it seems, was aware that writing this very song was avoidant. During an interview with David Fricke in the Peel Slowly and See box set (I just found this on Wikipedia, man, I can’t cite paper sources! It’s on page 73, and that’s all the MLA you’ll get), Reed reveals that he regrets the Velvet Underground demo’s original lyrics, which say “I've been told baby you've been bold / With Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod / Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday to Thursday / To Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod,” in reference to the nursery rhyme. While the final version—“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday to Thursday / With Harry, Mark, and John”—lists names so common I assumed they were anonymous, Reed remarks, “Jesus. Best left forgotten. Obviously, I didn't want to use real names yet. I probably wanted to make sure I wasn't using a name that really meant something to me.” And that, to me, sums up the whole song—Reed is just as much the satellite here, because even when he consciously engages with these feelings of betrayal, he’s still only orbiting the issue. It’s heartbreaking how he pushes the pain away, putting pressure on the wound, but the emotion gushes out all the same, like an open artery.

However, I’ve spent far too much time on these sparse lyrics when it’s the music itself that does the gushing in an outro that, despite taking up a third of the song (2:24 to the end), isn’t nearly long enough—like, I’m asking for a “Hey Jude” treatment here. In fact, I’d say there’s a lot in common here with “Hey Jude’s” triumphant close—the tempo picks up, a horn procession begins, and the title is catchily chanted like an audience could clap along. Don’t get me wrong—both songs make me happy cry—but “Satellite’s” outro mixes an impossible strain of despair into this celebratory chorus, making for this song’s most impressive juxtaposition. In this overwhelming, epic rocket launch, who better to usher us tearfully into space than David Bowie—surprise co-producer of Transformer with Mick Ronson, and the unmistakable, wailing crescendo closing “Satellite of Love?” I didn’t plan things this way, but it’s a real full-circle moment for this post to begin and end with two of Bowie’s biggest influences, both of whom he influenced in return. For all his out-of-tune discordance, no one else could’ve sung “Satellite of Love” like Lou Reed, and yet adding Bowie’s mournful howl to rival “Five Years” here really opens the floodgates for me. Of course, credit where credit is due, Thunderthighs also essentially contributed to this backing chorus in their descending half of the “of love” phrase, sounding both so angelic and so sullen. It’s an awful, beautiful feeling to end on, yet so immaculately captured—Reed’s voice as the relatable inner monologue, Bowie’s as the muse-like possession that overtakes us in our most Romantic lows, and Thunderthighs as the tired slump to the ground.

Pairs Well With: “Five Years” (David Bowie), “Hey Jude” (The Beatles), “The Wolf is on the Hill” (Beck and Tweedy)

LONELY METROPOLITAN | Herbert Bayer We talk about Bauhaus a lot here, but not so much Bauhaus art, and that’s because one of these things is not like the other (and one of these Bauhauses does not support individualism. I’m no art history buff, but as I understand it, the Bauhaus school, active prominently through the 1920s, was a factory for commercial modern artists molded to a more-or-less unified style, recognizable particularly in architecture to this day. Now, when it comes to brand bibles, I can’t help but be a total bootlicker—I love adhering to a specific set of parameters that form a shared identity across works—but I can promise this says nothing about my politics, as it clashes with some of my core artistic values. Though ironic, I have no doubt that stamping out individuality was nothing new for art schools then just as it isn’t now, but I’m comforted to know prolific commercial artists like Herbert Bayer came out the other end with their inner world intact. “Lonely Metropolitan” seems to me a testament of that, pushing back against photography’s intended “purpose” of capturing realism. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I had no idea that this piece used collaging—I thought he actually just found those hands floating there. No, but really, can you see the seam on those eyes? I’m not sure of the exact technique, but I wonder if the hand photos are lifted slightly above the background picture to capture the shadow behind them before a photo of the collage was taken. No matter how it was made, I found this piece to be pretty neat—despite being from 1932, something about those deep shadows and the victorian (?) brickwork in the background feels like it’s similar to this week’s Ripley and Brian Eno picks. You know, based on vibes.