February 18th, 2009 12:24pm
CYMBALS AND MEANING
Shelby Sifers - “Are You Devo? (The Spirituals remix)” If I had heard this remix in 2007, the year it came out, it would have been on my best songs list for that year. If I had heard it in 2008, it would have been on my list for last year (ps: this list is still online!). But no I just heard it last week, trollin' around after the Sarcastic Dharma Society. Shelby is a singer I know, but Tyler Tadlock & The Spirituals - they are new to me.
“Are You Devo?” is a song about loving someone as fiercely as you love a song. “Are you a man or are you Devo?”, Shelby asks. “Because I get the same strange feeling next to you / as when I put my Devo record on.” It's an odd thing to hear, coming from Shelby. Devo evokes blippy synthesisers, energy domes, “Whip It” - not the twisty earnestness of her songs. It's herky-jerk.
But what I later realise - and what the Spirituals understand from the beginning, - is that Sifers isn't saying that “my love feels like Devo.” She's saying “my love feels like how Devo makes me feel.” Which is to say, more herk- than -jerk, lunging and longing and lusting and leaping, breathing and dreaming, makes her feel alive and full of sparks. The Spirituals fill this beautiful song with bells, rings, swishes, claps, drums; they fill it with a lush pitterpat of glimmers, crashes, gleams. It's a remix that sounds like a kingdom falling down the stairs, a chandelier in the wind, a jazz combo at sea, a heart spun silver. It's the sound, I think, perhaps, of being in love.
Update: Mat from the Sarcastic Dharma Society in fact recorded the original "Are You Devo?", writing and playing all the "instrumental" bits other than the drums. Also, I got the year wrong. Anyway - thanks, Mat![Shelby Sifers's MySpace/download her albums free, Creative Commons-licensed/The Spirituals' MySpace]
Carrie Brownstein, on the dissolution of Touch & Go's distribution arm. I can't agree enough. If you care about music, please don't stop buying the records you love.
Being found is as splendid as the finding. Stumbling upon an MP3 or a blog or a Web site is only half the search. We seem to have forfeited our duties and become half-participants -- and at the cost of the creators. But we have to realize, and the Touch and Go announcement is a reminder, that in order for there to be anything left in which to participate, we have to show up. We have to show up with not just our half-selves, our virtual selves, our broke-ass selves, but with our whole selves, and in the spirit of giving. Mock participation is more than just an absence of real engagement; it is a falsehood that has allowed us to justify our apathy. When, exactly, did we stop showing up? And how long until there's not much left worth showing up for?
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