The Legacy of Trish Keenan: Before We Begin

When I named this blog “The Noise Made By People,” I didn’t really think about how big of a gamble it was to name it after one of my favorite albums. After all, there is a lot of music I listened to back then that I don’t even really like anymore, and some that is downright embarrassing. But over the years, as so many artists have come and gone, the music of Broadcast has remained the one constant of my music fandom. I didn’t even process it as a risk because some part of me knew that would be the case.

All of music is so subjective, and I’ve learned it’s not really worth trying to convince people to care about anything that really matters to you. But I’m still motivated to write by some sense of justice — the feeling that some artists simply deserve a chance to be heard, or credit for doing something great that hasn’t been given to them. A lot of that motivation came from loving Broadcast so much and feeling like any amount of effort would be worth it if I could get one more person to experience this band.

Despite my love for them, I haven’t really written at length about Broadcast, at least not since the beginning days of the blog. I’m motivated now out of fear that their music could completely disappear from the consciousness. Trish Keenan’s tragic death means there won’t be a trendy reunion tour where everyone looks back on their music, and other writers have become so obsessed with newness that there is no incentive for them to look back at a band like Broadcast. I don’t think they’re going to be included in the canon of their time, even though I don’t believe there was a better band during their existence.

Maybe that’s overstating things, and I’ll admit it’s hard to separate my more objective evaluation of the band with what they mean to me personally. The truth is, I never felt like someone who was necessarily predisposed to like psychedelic music. Drugs terrify me and I’ve never done them, I don’t really care for a lot of the hippie stuff that has often gone hand-in-hand with it, and even now I rarely feel like I fit in with that segment of music fans. A lot of the credit (or blame) for my taste goes to this band, because their whole discography functions as an argument in favor of psychedelia as a form of escape and a way to expand the mind.

And Keenan was the perfect guide for a psychedelia newbie. Their music always makes me think of Alice in Wonderland, with Keenan being this ordinary woman who is thrust into a strange universe that she needs to make sense of. She was an incredible singer, but in part because she didn’t show off with big notes or consciously mind-blowing lyrics. She was just very human and there was a sincerity in everything she did, and when it was combined with their often strange retro-futuristic music, it was magic.

What I find most satisfying about looking at Broadcast’s music in order is how they didn’t follow the dispiriting path so many artists take, where they start out being super exciting and show tons of promise, then gradually recede towards bland normalcy in an effort to appeal to more and more people. They started out in a place that was kind of ordinary, then with every record they built on their sound, explored new areas, and took their dedicated listeners with them on a journey. The end result is what I would consider the most rewarding music I’ve listened to, and it’s why I always use this band as an example of doing things the right way.

Their first singles were released in the mid-90s and compiled on 1997’s Work and Non-Work, which as I mentioned before, isn’t the type of debut that really blows you away and makes you certain that the band is destined for greatness. And reading really deep between the lines, I don’t get the sense that the band was ever incredibly proud of these early songs. It’s really good music, but it doesn’t quite feel like Broadcast, or at least not what they would become.

I don’t have a time machine, but I speculate that part of the issue was timing: these songs were released when this type of loungy downtempo electronic music was at the height of its popularity. In particular, the band was burdened by comparisons to Stereolab and perceived as kitschy and nostalgic. This wasn’t helped by the inclusion of “The Book Lovers” on the Austin Powers soundtrack, which is still very weird to me.

These early songs mostly establish one aspect of the band’s sound, which is their ability to mine the past and create a sense of nostalgia in their music. They were particularly obsessed with the 60s band The United States of America, and on Work and Non Work, it sometimes sounds like they’re emulating that band more than they’re finding their own sound. But in hindsight, it’s also easy to hear some of the seeds for what would make this band so special on their ensuing albums.

While these are their least musically adventurous songs, that makes them a real showcase for Keenan as a relatively traditional singer. The band was still tinkering with their sound and figuring out what worked, but she was captivating from the very beginning. She always struck me as very shy and thoughtful, and it comes through in her singing, which has this humble quality to it. On these songs, she sings with more directness than she would in future releases, but she already had that quiet confidence and human quality that added so much to their music.

Still, the songs on Work and Non Work aren’t the ones I tend to revisit when I go back and listen to Broadcast, even though they’re really quite good. That’s more a testament to the strength of the rest of their music and the way they evolved so naturally than an indictment of these songs. The band took their sweet time following up on these singles, which would become routine for a group that always seemed to think through everything they did and never compromised their art in any way. And on their next single, they found their identity as a band, creating a song that to this day still doesn’t feel like it should have been possible.

I’m Still Obsessed With a WWE Storyline

A lot has changed in professional wrestling since I started watching as a kid in the late 90s. Back then, WWE was in the midst of its renowned “Attitude Era” when characters like The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin were at their peak and the show was geared towards young men, which resulted in a lot of car crash TV techniques, bizarre outlandish storylines, and a high level of violence. Today’s WWE is different: it’s now a publicly shared company and about 10 years ago shifted towards family-friendly PG fare, with a deeper focus on in-ring athleticism. But by far the biggest change in the company in my time as a fan is the portrayal of the women.

Back in the Attitude Era, women were essentially objects. They were run out there to titillate the crowd and were often featured in “bra and panty” matches, mud wrestling, and various other degrading activities. While there were always a couple women who could actually wrestle, they were overshadowed by the slew of models WWE signed for their looks and then trained into mediocre/bad wrestlers who worked sloppy 2-3 minute matches.

In the last couple years, WWE has undergone a “women’s revolution,” where they’ve started recruiting women who are real wrestlers and put them in more high profile matches. This charge was led in part by Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch, first on their developmental show, NXT, and then on the main shows Raw and Smackdown. With the addition of former MMA star Ronda Rousey to the division, WWE has finally put some effort into some semblance of gender equality and has by far the deepest women’s division it’s ever had.

Despite this, some residue from the previous era lingers. Vince McMahon still runs this company and has made a habit of booking cute blonde women as champions, regardless of their in-ring ability. The women get more screen time, but they still rarely feel like complete characters, usually falling into a couple broad archetypes: the heels are Regina George mean girls while the babyfaces are just happy to be chasing their dreams and are always hugging each other and crying. I’m about 99% sure that WWE doesn’t have any women writers on its staff, and it’s evident in the way many of the characters are portrayed.

Meanwhile, WWE has gleefully marketed and hyped its self-proclaimed “women’s revolution,” but the only reason it needed to happen is because they were so shitty in the first place. Fans largely catch on to this, and I think it’s part of what is fueling this Charlotte/Becky storyline that I wrote about last month. Because Becky doesn’t really fit WWE’s mold for a champion: she’s kind of quirky, she’s attractive but not in the very specific way Vince McMahon likes, she’s got an Irish accent and an unusual speaking voice, she’s not blonde, etc. All of this fan resentment over the direction of the women’s division is now coming out in the Becky character and the crowd’s response to her.

When we last left off with our hero, she was chasing Charlotte’s title after “turning heel” at Summerslam, and was in an ambiguous character direction where she was acting heelish but getting huge cheers. To WWE’s credit, they’ve stayed the course with this and are finally writing a storyline that is worthy of the women performers that isn’t draped with their “look at what we’re letting the women do!” sloganeering. At the Hell in a Cell event, Becky reversed one of Charlotte’s moves for a surprising fair win. On the next episode of Smackdown, she celebrated in grand fashion in one of the best promo segments on the show in a long time.

If it wasn’t obvious before, this segment made it clear that in WWE’s mind, Becky is unambiguously a heel. She’s gloating, rubbing her win in Charlotte’s face, calling her a bitch and then beating her up. The announcers fall over themselves defending Charlotte and portraying her as sympathetic (which, to be fair, she kind of is). But the fans are still purely behind Becky, because this is an exciting character we’ve never seen before: a woman who simply doesn’t give a damn. After so many obnoxious heels and flat, goody-two-shoes babyfaces, it’s refreshing to see a woman character who has an edge, who is brazen and does what she wants, the way men like Stone Cold Steve Austin did at the height of the show’s popularity.

And Becky has real depth as a character, in part because Rebecca Quin is such a good performer. Sometimes in WWE, it feels like a flip is switched and someone becomes a totally different person when they change their heel/face alignment. This is the same character the crowd loved before, but she’s gained a new focus and has stopped caring about what anyone thinks of her. And now that she’s champion, she’s very proud of herself and is lording it over everybody while egotistically basking in the fans’ love of her.

I want to talk about Becky saying “bitch” at the end of this promo. Because to someone over the age of eight years old, it shouldn’t be a big deal to hear the word, and I’m sure if anyone who doesn’t watch wrestling is reading/watching this, they’re wondering why the crowd is gasping at it. Part of it is that WWE has been in this very safe, corporate PG era for a long time now, so any swearing has become somewhat unheard of. But also, wrestling has this effect on you where it sort of turns you back into a little kid when it really works, so in the moment I was like “OH MY GOD SHE SAID THE B-WORD. THAT’S A BAD WORD. THIS WOMAN IS OUT OF CONTROL.”

And as ridiculous as it sounds, WWE letting Becky say “bitch” might be the clearest sign that the company is fully invested in her now. The only other people I’ve heard say the word on TV recently are Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar, who are the two top stars in the company. It’s trotted out on serious occasions when they want a character to look badass. When the guys did it, it just came off as tryhard and misogynistic, but Becky being a woman and delivering it with perfect comedic timing made it work in this instance.

WWE is not a very admirable company and I’m loath to give them too much credit for a story that has been partially told by accident. But this story is sneakily pretty progressive compared to a lot of other media. How many other TV shows have a storyline between two women that isn’t about a man, where both characters feel real, have flaws, and their motivations make sense? Not very many, and I hope WWE sees the success of this feud and does more of this, because they have the talent to do so. This is what a “women’s revolution” actually looks like.

Emma Ruth Rundle Delivers Another Masterpiece With “On Dark Horses”

My favorite album from 2016 was Emma Ruth Rundle’s Marked for Death. My favorite album from 2018 will be Emma Ruth Rundle’s On Dark Horses. I say this with confidence because it’s that good. It’s so heavy and beautiful, with emotion and intensity oozing out of every note. Nobody else I’ve heard is making music that is this immersive with such a balance of intimacy and raw power.

Rundle stands alone at the intersection of about 30 different musical genres. Sometimes she sounds like dream pop, other times she’s metal, or alternative rock, or post-rock. She often gets called folk, which I kind of get, but it just makes me think that it’s futile to try to describe her in simple genre buzzwords. It’s music that resists easy labels because nobody else has ever made it before. There are a lot of reference points and influences, clearly, but I consider her a true original with no real comparisons. She sounds like everything else and nothing else at the same time.

Rundle’s arrival at this distinct sound was one of my favorite parts of Marked for Death: more than any artist I’m a fan of, she naturally evolved her style from record to record until reaching what felt like a pinnacle. At the time, I was tempted to call it her masterpiece, and the only thing that stopped me was the thought that she was possibly capable of topping it. With On Dark Horses, she has.

Like her last album, On Dark Horses is all about the slow burn. The songs are methodically paced, which creates space for Rundle to do what she does best: create a mesmerizing atmosphere with her guitar. Her songs tend to simmer and then boil over, the quiet verses giving way to loud choruses and powerful dramatic climaxes. This is basic alternative rock quiet-loud stuff, but the way Rundle executes it feels very different. It never feels like a formula; it’s just the natural path the songs go down as Rundle expresses herself. She balances the quiet and loud aspects of her sound perfectly, creating maximum catharsis in every song.

As a singer, Rundle has the versatility to match her guitar. She and her instrument are always intertwined, and she is capable of singing lovely quiet songs, like “Races,” and also belting out some massive rock choruses like the radio-ready hook on “Dead Set Eyes.” It’s crazy that a few years ago, she was doing instrumental music or burying her voice under layers of guitar. Now she is singing with confidence and seems to know how good she is. That never quite manifests itself in conventional rock frontperson swagger, because that isn’t her style, but it’s a feeling that I get listening to it. If the non-music story of Marked for Death was her finding her sound, the story of On Dark Horses is her expanding on it with complete self-assuredness.

That confidence also translates to her lyrics, which may be the biggest shift from her last album. The words on On Dark Horses are more direct and tangible while retaining the poetic ambiguity that they’ve always had. They also play off some of the expectations formed by Marked for Death, which possibly led some to pigeonhole her as another in a line of tormented doom-and-gloom songwriters. “Light Song” is a love song about her husband (who sings and plays on this album) while “Darkhorse” is an encouraging song to her sister, with the lyric “in the wake of weak beginnings, we can still stand high.” Of course, this album still isn’t peppy or upbeat by any stretch of the imagination, but there is more nuance in it than it might get credit for.

But really, I’m not all that concerned with breaking down the lyrics and trying to figure out the “meaning,” because I think the power of Rundle’s music is in its gray areas and the way it washes over the listener without compelling them to feel a specific way. It fits Rundle’s whole style, which exists outside of all of these artificial borders that get ascribed to artists, where they’re expected to fit into certain invisible categorizable boxes. Over her last couple albums, she has created her own genre, and right now it’s my favorite.