2012 – Riffs by Bob Music

Announcing a new category: Song of the Year. The first winner, for 2011, is Dawes, A Little Bit of Everything. For 2007, if I’d started this sooner, it would be Plain White T’s, Hey There Delilah. Also retrospectively, for 2009, the honor goes to Michael Franti & Spearhead, Say Hey (I Love You). I’ll fill in other missing years as and if songs of sufficient merit come to mind.
I was introduced to Dawes when The Current began playing Time Spent in Los Angeles before it was available on iTunes. (I know because I tried to buy it.) The clean, somber, thoughtful sound seemed anchored in the best part of L.A. When I next heard A Little Bit of Everything I was blown away, and the more I listened, the more it hooked me. It starts with a simple piano playing the tune and you can almost hear the piano singing the words. When they do come, they paint a picture and tell a story that is specific and intelligent, rhyming ‘San Francisco traffic’ with ‘join a demographic.’ An Andover classmate committed suicide this way (I think it was the Bay Bridge, not the Golden Gate, whichever bridge is in the song). The despair in these lyrics is palpable, but not so extreme that you can’t relate.
The song, however, doesn’t linger – it moves into an old folks’ home, and the places where our mothers now live come immediately to mind, even if they don’t have a buffet line. The old man, too, is sad as he looks back on his life; but for him, “a little bit of everything” is how he copes. By this time, too, a drum has been added to the lone piano, building momentum. In the instrumental break, a guitar begins to wail. We have been sucked in; now we are committed.
Then comes the capper: a young couple planning a fall wedding starts out as one more bit of sadness. “Baby,” the groom-to-be says, “you don’t seem to be having any fun at all.” Bride-to-be, however, tells him off and issues an affirmation: “Love is so much easier than you realize/ If you can give yourself to someone, then you should.” Out of hopelessness, hope. We pare down again to the simple piano notes. And amid some elliptical but deep-sounding phrases we are given a little bit of philosophy at the end, telling us, “Hey – don’t overthink everything”: “It’s like trying to make out every word when they should simply hum along.”
Of course, the fact that Serin and Marc were planning their wedding – albeit for August, not September – when this song came along, made it that much more personal. Three verses, three stories I could relate to. And the song ends, leaving you wanting more. Rhythmically, when Dawes sings “little bit of everything” there are two empty beats where you expect the phrase to end.

The single highlight of Monday night’s (July 16, 2012) Fiona Apple concert at the Orpheum came in the opening act, when Fiona’s lead guitarist, Blake Mills, performed ‘Sleepwalk,’ one of the great instrumentals in rock history. He gussied it up some with his wonderfully expressive guitar, but the song’s essence remained the same. The memories of slow-dancing in a basement rec room in 7th grade were only a part – well, maybe a big part – of the pleasure this performance gave me. Just as thrilling was the recognition that ’50s music sounds just as good 50 years later, and that a guitarist for one of the most challenging and lauded artists of 2012 can make it his own today. There was, however, one little time bump: rather than acknowledge 1959 as the original date for the Santo & Johnny hit, Blake recalled the song from the 1987 movie La Bamba.
As for Fiona Apple’s performance, she was a dynamo. I only knew one of her songs, “Criminal,” and it’s not a favorite, but you had to admire the ferocity with which she projected her music and, with her sprite-like body, controlled the stage. The musical highlight, coincidentally, was another oldie: she sang Conway Twitty’s “It’s Only Make Believe” for her encore, showing off every bit of her vocal range and power.

Archive for year: 2012