Single-Song Obsessions: Kate Bush — “Misty”

In our current age of ADD, I’ve been somewhat blessed with an extremely long attention span. Unfortunately, I don’t really use it to do anything productive, but it has given me a special love for long songs — really long songs. Whenever I see an album with a song over ten minutes long, I get really excited.

Long songs are special little nuggets in the music world, especially these days when most bands are focused on trying to create the next great three-minute pop single that can be added to someone’s “workin’ out” playlist on their iPod shuffle. They allow so many more possibilities for storytelling and showcases of musical skill. Of course, they also require a lot of ambition and are difficult to pull off effectively, which is why most bands steer clear of them.

My favorite recent use of long songs is easily Kate Bush’s late-2011 album 50 Words for Snow (which I stupidly left off my “best albums of 2011” list, something that still eats at me even though nobody else cares). It’s a delight for long song aficionados, with just seven songs that add up to a 65-minute run time — the shortest song is album closer “Among Angels” which is 6:49. The longest is “Misty”, which is 13:32.

Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s also my favorite song on the album. In fact, it could be said that I am somewhat obsessed with “Misty” — not just the song itself, but all of the artistic qualities it represents. After the album came out, I excitedly told everyone about how it had a “13-minute song about falling in love with a snowman.” Because who makes a 13-minute song about falling in love with a snowman? Why would anyone do that? And how could it possibly be good?

Perhaps the only person in the world who could do it or would do it is Kate Bush, who in her 30+ year career has consistently pushed the boundaries of art and has an affinity for oddball subject matter. A very underrated trait among great artists, especially ones I admire, is the willingness to go through with ideas that seem insane on the surface. As someone who has a lot of half-finished posts sitting in my drafts folder on this blog, I feel a lot of respect towards Bush, who sat down at her piano and hammered this song out because she knew it would be good. I imagine her picking up the phone during the writing process and having to tell whoever called “I can’t speak right now. I’m working on my song about loving a snowman.” She probably put off other real-life responsibilities while writing her snowman song, confident that people would want to listen to it when it was finished. To me, that is pretty much the definition of an artist.

Now, when you read that the song is about falling in love with a snowman, you probably figured “oh, it’s a metaphor for being with a cold, distant lover or something.” Nope. Another reason why this song is great is that Bush attacks the subject matter head-on instead of using bland, figurative language. Above a recurring piano figure, she recounts building the snowman, then how the snowman ends up in her bed.

Unfortunately, like all one-night affairs with snowmen, Bush’s tryst was doomed to end in heartbreak. “I can feel him melting in my hand,” she laments, knowing that you only have a limited amount of time to be with a snowman. At about the 8-minute mark, a guitar and some light strings join the piano as the song picks up in tempo. “I can’t find him… the sheets are soaking,” Bush sings, her voice full of very real yearning. The seriousness with which Bush sings the song is just another way that I think she’s in on the “joke” and is aware of the song’s dark comedy and absurdity.

But even though this song is absurd, it has a genuine emotional impact. Once you let the initial concept sink in (and since the song is so long, it will if you have the patience), it becomes a pretty stirring tale of two star-crossed lovers who obviously can never have a future. She was the good girl from the high-class family who wanted the best things in life. He was three balls of snow stacked on top of each other with a mouth full of dead leaves. You can see why it would never work out.

“Misty” is probably not a song that everyone will enjoy — you have to have patience and a tolerance for some weirdness. But when it comes to unabashed love songs, I’ll take this one over just about anything from the last few years, especially the little three-minute radio songs. It’s an absolutely unique song by an artist who clearly doesn’t think like everyone else.

Tig Notaro — “Live”

In addition to being a big dork about music, I’m also significantly dorky about comedy. I fit nicely into that stereotype of the person who “takes comedy seriously”: I’m the guy who explains jokes from The Simpsons, tries to explain to you why Family Guy sucks, and spends too much time writing and analyzing his own jokes that aren’t even all that good. And my views on comedy aren’t that dissimilar from my views on music: I think the best, most enduring stand-up comedy comes out of some sort of personal fear or despair, and at its best it will make you think in addition to enjoying it on a basic level.

Comedian Tig Notaro performed her set that comprises Live (the title is the verb, as in living) a couple months ago at The Largo, a club in Los Angeles. Word spread of it pretty quickly among comedy-types on Twitter and elsewhere: Louis C.K. described it as one of the few masterful standup sets he’d ever seen, and fellow performers Ed Helms and Bill Burr both expressed their awe of Notaro’s performance. Louis liked it so much that he decided the world needed to hear it, and he’s currently selling it at his website for five dollars.

So what’s so special about this performance? Notaro performed it just hours after being diagnosed with cancer in both of her breasts, and just weeks after her mother died in a freak accident, her long-term partner broke up with her, and she suffered from a life-threatening bacteria in her intestines that caused her to lose 20 pounds. In the face of that mind-blowing adversity, Notaro remains calm and good-humored, even starting the show by greeting her audience with “Hello! How are you? I have cancer! How are you?”

Notaro’s comedic voice is very wry and calm, which in some ways makes her a perfect fit for subject matter that sometimes goes to the darkest places imaginable. At first her audience is stunned and not sure how to react to her brazen material about potentially being near death — frequently during the show she has to assure them that “it’s going to be okay,” before adding “well, you’re going to be okay. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.” A lot of what makes Live such a unique and incredible document is how the classic relationship with stand-up and audience unfolds over the course of the 30-minute set, as eventually the awkward silence gives way to laughter (and, according to people who were at the show, tears). Near the end, Notaro decides maybe she should go back to performing some of her old material, at which point a man with a booming voice in the audience yells “NO! NO. THIS IS FUCKING INCREDIBLE.”

Live resembles a typical comedy set even less than Tig’s usual stuff, which has always favored longer comedic storytelling over “jokes.” For the most part it’s just her talking about all the crazy things that have happened to her with a baffled sense of resignation. On paper it may not sound too funny, but Notaro is remarkably able to wring tons of laughs out of the most morbid subject matter. One of the funniest parts of the show comes when Notaro wonders if God is looking over her and saying “I think she can take a little more.” Notaro never is angry or blames anyone for what has happened to her, but instead is just nonplussed at the litany of horrible things that life has thrown at her for no reason.

So, even though it’s not music, Live is maybe the best thing I’ve listened to this year. If Tig was a musician it could be a classic, moving album, and if she was a writer it could be a touching, heartfelt memoir. (Notaro actually did land a book deal after this whole ordeal.) Like the best comedy, it’s funny and thought-provoking, but it is also incredibly inspiring to hear someone who has been through hell just go on stage and make people laugh about it for 30 minutes. And while most comedy albums are rehearsed endlessly, there’s a spontaneity to Live that makes it unique beyond just the rare and frank subject matter.

Notaro is apparently doing better since Live was recorded. She appeared on Conan saying she has received a double mastectomy and is currently cancer-free. I urge basically anyone to go to Louis C.K.’s website and download the special. Four dollars from each purchase will go to Tig herself, and she plans to donate some of the money to breast cancer research. I highly doubt you’ll find a better way to spend five dollars this year.

Team Dresch – “Personal Best”

Right now, maybe the biggest story here in Minnesota is over a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would limit marriage to a man and a woman. My school recently came out as “neutral” regarding the amendment, a non-stance that infuriated a good chunk of the student body and has led to endless debate on various Facebook pages. I don’t intend to get into a huge rant about this issue here, but the continued fight for LGBT (and all those other letters) rights reminded me of Team Dresch, and their 1995 album Personal Best — an album that captured so many of these hot-button issues back in the mid-90’s and still feels fresh today because of it.

Part of the greatness of “Personal Best” is that it offered a point-of-view that is exceedingly rare in music, especially rock music. Every member of Team Dresch was openly lesbian, something that deeply affected their songwriting. Like most Riot Grrrl albums, Personal Best focuses frequently on women’s issues, but it also expands into other LGBT-related subject matter that stands out because so few songs are written about it. No canonized dude-rock band has ever made a song like “Freewheel,” which focuses on a girl/girl relationship and includes the kiss-off line “go back to your boyfriend.”

Due to the makeup of the band and the songs themselves, Personal Best feels like one of the truest punk albums out there, an authentic collection of anthems for outsiders and the disenfranchised. And, like most of the music from the Riot Grrrl movement, it oozes passion and intensity in every note. It has that feeling of music that was made because it had to be heard and it has something important to say, not because the band felt like throwing together some songs or wanted to cash a paycheck.

This is most apparent on “She’s Amazing,” one of the most inspiring and vital songs to come out of the Riot Grrrl movement. Dedicated to an outspoken female role model (there’s another subject not seen in many rock songs), it could easily apply to the entire movement itself, which was full of outspoken members that “many people will try to destroy.” On a similar note, “1 Chance Pirate TV” turns the Sinead O’Connor SNL incident into one of the album’s most memorable songs, as it sprints out of the gate with an angry punk guitar riff before slowing down into a tone of resigned acceptance with the refrain “sometimes it feels alright.” Elsewhere, the band targets the Christian right on the appropriately titled “Hate the Christian Right!”

Personal Best has 10 songs that zip by in just 24 minutes, but it leaves a significant impression. It’s punk at its best, combining the personal and political, inspiration and outrage, and bringing it all together with good old fashioned quality songwriting. From start to finish, it holds up as arguably the strongest album of the Riot Grrrl movement, and it feels more important now than ever. In many ways, it feels like the soundtrack to a revolution that is now in full swing.