Noise out of Nowhere
When Bob Dylan, Adrianne Lenker, and Michael Hurley get loud
You know when there’s a painfully loud part of a song, and you either have to turn it down or wince your way through it? Like in “A Day in the Life,” or “Heroin”—many a Velvet Underground song, really.
When I listen to music—most music, not metal or noise—there’s an unwritten agreement between the artists and me that the music will be listenable. I don’t mean listenable as in good, just listenable as in safe. I’m vulnerable with my earbuds shoved in my ears. Crank the decibels, damage done. Which makes these instances of excess all the more interesting: they break this contract, drawing my attention to the fact that music is, before anything else, noise, noise normally ordered, though not exclusively so.
“The Tea Song”
Michael Hurley sings softly. A friend described his voice as honey, which sounds about right, particularly in his ‘70s releases: Armchair Boogie, Hi-Fi Snock Uptown, Have Moicy!, and Long Journey. His ‘60s debut, though, is raw and libidinous. And on “The Tea Song,” a seven-minute epic of sorrowful lethargy, he wails between quiet declarations of despair. You might need quick fingers to protect your ears. Spotify, Apple Music.
I first thought the title-tea to be of the opium variety given Hurley’s haze and leprechaun conjuring. But then, after a bit of biographical research, I learned he identifies as a tea man in a coffee-drinking world. Slow for slow’s sake, letting life pass by his eyes. First Songs is proof of his ability to observe from stasis, place a microscope atop the miniature.
Hurley wails for love lost, loneliness undermined by paranoia. They’re pain-fueled howls powerful enough to transfigure the man Mike into Id-driven Werewolf by the album’s closing track.
“Girl from the North Country”
Dylan makes essentially the same move, letting a piercing noise stand in for heartbreak at the end of “Girl from the North Country.” Instead of a wail, though, Dylan uses his harmonica. The harmonica is a strange instrument. Pocket-sized, down-home. I’d like to write about it, or better yet, read about it. It’s one-note, often annoying, only a (somewhat large) step above the kazoo and accordion in my mind. And still it works, works for Dylan anyway.
The note swells. It peers over the edge of glass-shattering vigor, sticks a toe above the abyss, and finally decides against it, catching a warm thermal and floating gently out of sight.
Spotify, Apple Music. Youtube weirdly only has the Johnny Cash duet. No thanks.
“Real Love”
I have a sneaking suspicion Adrianne Lenker of Pitchfork-darling Big Thief is a big Bob Dylan fan. She writes fluently in his surrealistic and impressionistic modes, interpreting folk music expansively. Like in “Cattails,” when she sings “And the clusters fell, like an empty bell / meteor showers at the motel.” She turns “mo-tel” into two separate words, her phrasing conjuring Dylan inside this image of apocalyptic americana.
Then there’s Lenker and ex-husband / still-band member Buck Meek’s song “Kerina,” which is even folkier, and which I think is an homage to Dylan’s “Corrina, Corrina.” If the title leaves you unconvinced, there’s that mid-chorus moment when Lenker sings “wind doesn’t blow baby just ‘cause I want it to.” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” anyone? Spotify, Apple Music.
I’m hypothesizing Lenker’s fandom, though, because I think she’s snatched Dylan’s rhetorical move on “Girl from the North Country” (can instrumentation be rhetorical?) and employed it for Big Thief’s purposes.
Big Thief make contemporary rock music exciting for me unlike just about any other band. Part of it is the guitar solos, so spare that I invent notes in the negative space. A personal favorite: “Paul,” in which Meek has a solo consisting of a whopping four notes, each quivering, much like Lenker herself, on the verge of tears. I shiver.
I can’t usually stomach noise-rock. And yet Big Thief employ discord so thoughtfully. I like it when it advances an argument. It does on “Real Love,” a song about, well, real love—familial and romantic—the way it wrests repetition’s comfort, the way it requires an undoing vulnerability.
Summing up the situation better than my faulty prose: the second guitar solo. It begins—like Hurley’s wail, Dylan’s harmonica—as one note. At first, simple, rhythmic. But it starts bouncing off itself, losing any origin like a Möbius strip. The rhythm blurs, the noise builds. And right as I’m contemplating shutting it off—giving up, if you will, fleeing—something happens. First, it slows, takes a breath. Looks around, maybe. Everywhere, destruction—tears and thrown things and words irrevocably spoken. Then, the one note finds a door. On the other side, an unspoken communion. A path forward. Something like creation. Just listen to it.
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