Sit Still and Shut Up
This is the new Great Lake Swimmers video, called Stealing Tomorrow, from their live session recorded in the Royal Canadian Legion Hall. I have always liked Great Lake Swimmers in a tepid sort of way. They can be beautiful, but there are times when I have found them a little boring, I have to confess.
I learned an important lesson about that, though, from Sam Amidon a couple of years ago. When Campfires & Battlefields (long-time Toad reader and contributor) first introduced me to All Is Well I liked it, but I never fell in love with it anything like I did when he played to a spellbound Bowery crowd in 2008. There was something about the silence in between the notes, of which he plays very few, listening to them gently die into silence and the emphasis on the rather brutal lyrics, which absolutely knocked me sideways. I rarely listen to music in such intense isolation.
Ever since then I have to remind myself how little genuine attention I give to music. I listen at work whilst doing my job, whilst walking through town, whilst deciding whether or not to write about it, and on the bus to work in the morning. Little of that is ever done with absolute full attention, devoid of any distractions. In fact, that’s why I like vinyl. I don’t care too much about the crakles or that kind of stuff, and I am not an audiophile in particular, but I love that it is very hard to do other things whilst listening to records on vinyl. You almost have to pay attention.
A friend of mine here at work saw the Great Lake Swimmers in Glasgow a while ago and said that they were stunning. Watching that gorgeous video I find myself reminded a little of the Sam Amidon gig, and what Andy told me about Great Lake Swimmers. It’s so slow and lovely that I feel I might be missing the point of the band if I don’t go and sit down and listen to them with the shutters closed and nothing around me. I’ve listened to all of our releases like this – just sitting in the middle of the floor, facing the speakers, and soaking it in.
Neither you nor I will have time to do this very often, to sit and just soak music in like this, but every now and then a band comes along who remind me how satisfying and important a thing this is to do. I am going to go and see the Great Lake Swimmers live before I say anything else uncharitable about them. Their new album is on eMusic here, if you’d like to give it a try.
yep – well said – i listen to a lot of new music, but how often do i give it my full (ie undivided) attention? – probably not that often – this may (to some extent) be a product of the sheer availability of music in the digital era – i sometimes read about a band, go to their myspace or lastfm page and start listening, maybe download from emusic, read a few blog reviews, and then read about another band and i’m ‘tracking’ that music down when i should be listening properly to the music that’s playing – i think it’s a more general problem this one – something to do with how to deliberately slow down in a society which is being conditioned to living within a stream of information/entertainment/distraction – long time tony dekker (gls) fan btw – various stages my favourite song – worth checking out is tony’s ‘tiny desk concert’ for national public radio (npr)
“I listen at work whilst doing my job, whilst walking through town, whilst deciding whether or not to write about it, and on the bus to work in the morning. ”
I had a real gut reaction to that statement because one of the reasons that classical music fails in the popular market is that it needs the same attention that one would give a film or a vinyl album.
Well so much pop music was simply designed for a different purpose – it’s basically just folk, so it’s easy to see how the fundamental model for classical music simply got swamped.
But I know people who sit down and listen to whole pop (well, ‘indie’ really I guess, inasmuch as this stuff means anything) records as you describe listening to classical ones. But most pop is so immediate that it’s easy to forget that some of it benefits enormously from being treated with a little more patience.
As much as I hate my hour-and-a-half journeys to and from work, they have given me the chance to listen to albums closely and repeatedly, until I know them well.
I don’t think I’d have become such a big fan of say Ocean Songs by the Dirty Three or Boxer by The National, amongst others, without having to endure that soul-crushing trudge on the number 22 bus twice a day.
Although, to back up Ben’s point, and Matthew’s point from the post itself, I don’t understand people I see on the bus with their iPod on and reading a book or the paper.
I generally have a quick look through the Metro when I first get on the bus in the morning, mainly ust to read the Nemi cartoon (Is it wrong to think Nemi’s mate Cyan is quite hot?)
After that I generally stick an album on.
If you’re doing something else while listening to music, you’re obviously just using it as background noise.
Nemi is hotter, because she’s a mental, irrational alcoholic. And erm, as you can tell, that’s my kinda girl.
Yeah, but Cyan’s got bunches.
Yeah, this is why I like going to shows alone. Just let me be and let me focus. I know it looks like I’m staring at his crotch, but honestly I’m LISTENING to that guitarist. Truly I am. xo
I also like that because I don’t mind seeing the odd shit show occasionally, because I am generally on the look out for something interesting and it doesn’t always work out. Consequently if you’re there alone you don’t constantly feel responsible for someone else’s enjoyment.