Dario Marianelli - V for Vendetta: Evey Reborn

I remember as a child my mom after dinner. 

"Look at the pretty trees," she said, washing a dish. She looked out the window over the sink. 

***

Breathing, scattered gravel and lactic acid legs running constantly uphill. Heat, roadkill, swamp, relentless elevation, a drainage ditch, a decaying willow, heavy legs.  

Mile five apexed. The last two miles were downhill. That didn't matter. Downhill on foot you still have to put one foot in front of the other. 

Then my mom's voice rose from the back of my head: "Look at the pretty trees".

I looked out at the top of the fifth mile and saw rolling hills, waving grass, cows, a hand-built fence, and further in the distance, a long ridge that lifted from the plain to make the horizon. The wind wound through and moved it all. The clouds shifted shadow and light. 

***

I came home after a bad day, made myself dinner and turned on TV. V for Vendetta. They throw Evey in prison and take away her hope. They put her in a smock, shave her hair, feed her slop she rushes to eat before the mouse. They want her to give up V. In a crack in the wall she find toilet paper. On it is the story of the cell's past inmate, Valerie, imprisoned for lesbianism. 

Valerie wrote her life story on the piece of toilet paper. From her first love, to her parents disowning her, to finally meeting her partner, to a few years of bliss, to persecution and then imprisonment. The note ends with Valerie saying no one can take away those years of freedom she had with her love. 

The music during the montage of Valerie's story is a gentle, pattering piano (4:10 in "Valerie"). Its rhythm suggests soft rain. Valerie says she found comfort in the rain, that her grandmother told her "God is in the rain". 

Evey reads pieces of Valerie's story between torture. Finally, her captors bring an ultimatum: give up V or die. She chooses to die. 

She's let out of the cell and finds it's a fake. V set the prison up, shaved her head and tortured her to teach a lesson: that she valued freedom over life. It all hits and Evey hyperventilates. V tells her that just because it wasn't real doesn't mean that what she learned about herself wasn't real. She says she needs air and he takes her to the roof.  

"Every Reborn" starts with buddhist instruments: a singing bowl, bells, wind chimes, pebbles. These instruments' limited pitch ranges and interfaces do not produce melodies, and therefore, cannot stir the emotions as instruments capable of melodies do. Still, their sonic variations challenge the attention. This combination makes these instruments ideal tools for meditation. These buddhist instruments presage Evey's enlightenment, the most important buddhist enlightenment, detachment from fear of death. (The movie visually emphasizes Evey's buddhist character by dressing her as a monk: her prison garb is a simple orange smock, like traditional buddhist robes; her head is shaved like a buddhist monk's). 

At :25 are foreboding, dissonant strings. They are dread. They occur exactly when Evey realizes her prison experience may be inauthentic. At :35 the dread manifests as a physical sensation - it's a more visceral, anxious feeling. This feeling is accomplished through a synth guitar moving left to right and back and forth, like an angry bee in the brain. The key and timbre feel Middle Eastern - evoking heat, and for Westerners, the unknown and inhospitable. At :58 the buddhist mindfulness bells return, suggesting vacillation between anxiety and enlightenment - the jagged, disordered state when the mind is on the brink of something. 

At 1:05 is a wheezing synth rhythm that matches the rhythm of hyperventilation. At 1:12 returns the Middle Eastern guitar, stronger and more prolonged, pouring on anxiety, even, at 1:34, modulating up an octave, becoming more anxious. The hyperventilation rhythms continue, just as Evey hyperventilates from the shock of the reveal. 

But in the mess of all this anxiety and dissonance, something different rises at 1:28. Strings that are more consonant. These strings are an embryonic version of the "Freedom Chords". Some enlightenment is emerging from the anxiety. 

You can hear the Freedom Chords clearly from 2:30 to 2:39. They're a simple, driving 4 sustained chord progression. They seem to be ABCD (they might be shifted up or down, but the proportions are correct). ABCD looks like a simple progression, going up one note each time, but because of how musical notation was set, there is a big step between A and B, a smaller one between B and C, and another big one between C and D. 

These intervals give the rising pitch a persevering quality. It takes a big step from A to B, a small step from B to C (as if it ran into some resistance or tired), and then gathers its strength for another big step from C to D. It reminds me of the Animatrix short "World Record", where an athlete limited by the Matrix to a wheelchair, frees his mind, lifts himself from the wheelchair, and takes some steps. 

At the same time, it feels incomplete. If something is moving up from A, it should find its dominant fifth, which is an E. The Freedom Chords go from A to D, so while they feel positive, there is still a sense they are unresolved since they haven't reached E. This lack of fulfillment is used to great effect. It allows the Freedom Chords to repeat and modulate up repeatedly. That lack of fulfillment also suggests there is more work to do; that the enlightenment isn't an end to itself, but will lead to something else. 

At 1:55, the anxious dissonance begins to clear for a tentative statement of the Freedom Chords. The veil has been lifted and something good is about to happen. At 2:12, the buddhist bells ring once more, signaling the enlightenment about to occur. 

Finally, the fireworks start at 2:30. This is when V brings Evey to the roof and she has her rain-drenched epiphany.  

At 2:30 there are two strains of music. The lower strings play the Freedom Chords. The sustained notes are strong, stable and growing in power. At the same time, a higher string desperately tries to play the Freedom Chords. Instead it hits that first A again and again in time with the ABCD of the underlying strings. It has recognized the Freedom Chords' rhythm, and can reproduce it, but it can't muster the strength to modulate its pitch higher as the Freedom Chords do. It even falters down a note at 2:40 before recovering. 

These two threads are a musical representation of the visual. In the background of this shot, you have V, strong, already enlightened. He is those low strings playing the Freedom Chords. Evey is that high string, weak, trying to find her footing, trying to reach the power of the Freedom Chords. 

At 2:41 is a rising violin. Its rhythm is similar to the rhythm of Valerie's theme.

***

Valerie's theme was in 5/4 time, an odd rhythm. Most western music is in 3/4 or 4/4. But it makes sense to use 5/4 for Valerie's theme, since society rejects her, as it does 5/4. 

There are two more interesting aspects of Valerie's theme. First, it obscures its 5/4 by randomizing some notes. The irregular rhythm of the notes and that they are played by a soft piano evoke the sound of rain. Rain is integral to Valerie's character. She finds comfort in the rain, that "God is in the rain", as she remembers her grandmother said.  

Second, Valerie's theme is 5 beats per measure divided into a very waltz-like first 3 beats (heavy emphasis on the first and light on the next two), then punctuated by a further 2 beats. This can be heard clearly in a variation of the theme played at 6:03 in "Valerie". 

The waltz-like character of her theme also reinforces her solitary, unique nature. Waltz-like, triple meter beats are characteristic of eccentrics: Jack Sparrow, Wall-E  and Amelie.

***

The movie cuts from V's quarters to the roof, where it's raining. After a couple of seconds, Evey notices the rain, and connects it with the memory of Valerie. This is indicated by her saying, just as Valerie did: "God is in the rain".

The rain is a visual symbol for the memory of Valerie. Through rain her courage, her refusal to submit and her acceptance of death are evoked visually. 

Valerie's memory is also evoked in sound. A lone violin rises with the Freedom Chords in triple meter, which echoes Valerie's theme (2:41 in "Evey Reborn"). 

The rise of Valerie's violin is very connected to the Freedom Chords - its general structure is that it starts level with the Freedom Chord, then rushes past the subsequent Freedom Chord's pitch before that Chord sounds, then falls back to match that Chord's pitch when it does sound, then repeats. It's like when your friend is excited and starts walking faster than you, then doubles back to walk with you, but quickly outpaces you again.  The way the violin very briefly rushes past its next chord and resets itself gives it this breathless, exhilarating lift. Valerie's strings urge the Freedom Chords on: bring on the enlightenment! 

It's the support of a small, beautiful memory that carries the day. 

But, it's the timing of the triple meter allusion to Valerie that is brilliant. These strings start before Evey consciously recognizes the rain, that is, before she says "God is in the rain". They represent an unconscious realization that is working up to her consciousness. 

The Valerie strings are like when you are in a situation that requires a certain word, and you can feel that word, feel what it means and how it sounds and how it's used, but it takes a couple of seconds to remember the actual word. And because you felt the word before you knew it, it's an epiphany when the actual word pops into your brain.

This musical timing of Valerie's strings placed before Evey's conscious realization suggests to us that, before Evey connects the rain with Valerie's memory consciously, she feels the memory of Valerie bubbling up to the surface. The music communicates this complex state of mind, of feeling something before you know it. Through music, the viewer is able to experience this state of mind with Evey.

The music continues to climb. There is an especially nice touch from 3:03 to 3:09, where two variations of a violin melody sound, almost like mirror images of each other, the melody swings like a pendulum from one side to another. This coincides with the visual parallel of V's enlightenment by fire with Evey's by rain - further bringing home that Evey is being freed in a way similar to V. The song ends, like the Freedom Chord progression, not fully resolved, signaling that what epiphany Evey had isn't a solution, but will enable her to do the difficult things that could help. 

This sequence brings with it so many observations. The most important is the power of memories. At some point in your life, when things were grim, you must have remembered something that helped. "Look at the pretty trees," my mom said, when she washed dishes. Her change in perspective, from daily toil to beauty, surfaces when I'm in drudgery. It lightens the situation and allows me to continue. We need to remember these moments, make them for the people around us and search for them when we need them. The more there are, the more likely they will rise up without conscious thought, before we even know what they are, and lead us to a better place, like Valerie's strings. 

Feist - The Park (Part 1)

I used to think I had, not a far ranging, but an expanded musical taste in comparison to most. I used to think, why don’t more people still listen to Jet? “Sound and Color” by Alabama Shakes? The Fratellis? Yael Naim’s “New Soul”? Stereogram’s “Walkie Talkie Man”? My guess was that most people don’t have the exploratory nature that I have when it comes to music. 

Then I realized. Apple ads. My deep cuts were from Apple ads. I had no exploratory, discerning ear. I sat in front of the TV like everyone else and salivated to whatever the hip black silhouettes were dancing to. 

Still, it’s with no shame that I listen to Feist. “1234” was in an Apple ad my first year of college, and I listened to it when I ran around the lakes, past the girls in short shorts running in the other direction, and in-between classes, past the girls who wore yoga pants in public (which were only just becoming acceptable), and compulsively whenever headphones were nearby, such as in the dorm study room, which looked out to a volleyball court below, full of bare long legs. 

I didn’t know it then, but now I think I see why it resonated. 

Feist’s voice had the qualities of my ideal girl. She had the right amount of vocal fry, that low, vague crispiness at the end of sentences that became ubiquitous in girls of my age, and that was just being identified and commented on back then. The decadence of vocal fry in small doses is viscerally sexual. Her voice had just a trace of kink, the perfect amount.  

At the same time, there was a beguiling innocence. She whispers her words often, like she’s telling you a secret she’s slightly ashamed of (see the beginning of "1234"). Her words are breathy, like she’s either breathless or nursing an adorable cold. She often runs over her “r”s (see “door” at :22), like Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny. The extreme pitch variations she effortlessly hits give her a whimsical quality (see :18 “those teenage hopes…”). 

As a freshman, every day there was a new girl whose visual and bearing matched that of Feist’s sound. All I had to do was listen to “1234” to experience her. 

What strikes me most about “1234” now is the simplicity and eagerness of the acoustic guitar’s rhythm (you can hear it right at the beginning). If there’s one thing missing now when I chase girls, it’s the innocent eagerness of that guitar, the eagerness that knows no better. That guitar’s rhythm, that was the pep and hope in my step as I chased one girl after another back then. Those strings at :18 was the romanticism that swept me away. 

One girl I knew had four close friends. Somehow, in the very early days, before most of guys knew any girls, I was regularly going over to her dorm and watching movies with her and her friends. I had their rapt attention because I was the first college boy they had ever encountered up close. And I was intoxicated by these beautiful women, their attention, and submerged in the fresh possibility of love. It was like living in “1234”. 

But the thing about possibilities is few of them work out. And the thing about first love is that it happens only once. That is to say, I did settle on one girl, and for a while it was fantastic. 

I remember the day after I kissed her there were sunrays. And human beings walking all around me. Simply human beings. Miraculously human beings. Beautiful. Male and female. All content, all walking to the tune that can't be heard but is there and is what we're all searching for. And everything, everything was that feeling in your heart when your mother stroked your hair and your father held you close, bear hug, squeezing all inequity out and bringing the peace. Seeing each face was seeing harmony and fulfillment. All a joy. Problems dissolved. Equilibrium reached.

But when we broke up everything became cold sweat and frustration. And thinking: what did I do wrong? I must work to be better. Then someone will like me. 

Sometimes, a year or so later,  after college, I’d sit there, in a quiet place, a thousand miles from her and wonder what would happen if I looked up and saw her walking towards me. 

Feist has a song for that, too. It’s called “The Park”. 

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Stop the Clocks

You're breathing. In and out, in and out. In and out, in and out.

Now try in. In, in. In, in. In, in. It doesn't feel good.

Because I breathe in, I will breathe out. Because I breathe out, I will breath in. This is the mode of thinking, the cause and effect that is reinforced in every living human with each breath. 12 times a minute; 17,000 times a day.

Music takes advantage of this expectation. It can set up an "inhale" and an "exhale", then take the "exhale" away, to uncomfortable effect. In other words, some songs develop a shortness of breath.

An example is Sufjan Stevens' "The Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake".

The song's fundamental structure is an inhale and an exhale. The first part - the "in" - is the rising piano from :00 to :07. The second part - the "out" - is the descending piano from :08 to :12.

There are 4 repetitions of "in" and "out" up to :46. Enough repetitions to establish an expectation. When we hear the "in" we want to hear the "out" again.

From :46 to :52, we hear the "in" again. At :52 we should hear the "out". But instead, the "in" sounds again. And again, and again. The "in" repeats 6 times, without its "out".

It's an unsettling effect. The song no longer breathes correctly.

It's a great way to score the approach of a tornado. A person looks into the distance at the tornado, is apprehensive, but knows the world will go on after it passes. Then he sees the tornado approach, sees it tear through a house that's been there his whole life, sees the beams floating off into the air - suddenly the permanence he is accustomed to falls apart, and he starts to hyperventilate.

This song's feeling is augmented by introducing bass, ramping up the ambient noise and adding flourishes to the piano, but all of this is ornamentation of the song's basic structure: establishing and "in" and "out", and then taking the "out" away.

"Stop the Clocks" uses a complex version of this idea to create an effective guitar solo.

The song's lyrics seem to come from a deathbed. Have you seen a person on her deathbed? She loses functions one after another. She can't walk. Then she can't move. Then she can't talk. Then she can't open her eyes. She is a mass that is there, still apparently breathing.

But what is going on in her head? Does she think? Does she hear? Does she feel pain? Does she fear Can she perceive at all, and if so, what? This is what "Stop the Clocks" is about.

The singer is about to die. He's starting to lose his perceptions. He can't see or hear the people around him:

Lost inside my head behind a wall

Do they hear me when I call? 

He mistrusts the perceptions he has left:

What if I'm already dead

How would I know? 

He doesn't know what will happen next. Sometimes he asks, "where will I rise?"; sometimes "where will I fall?". Perhaps, he will go up to some heaven; perhaps he will go down to some hell.

Other times, he seems to think after he dies there will be nothing:

And when the night is over

There'll be no sound 

If, on your deathbed, you dwell on the uncertainty of life after death long enough, you'll develop a shortness of breath. That's what happens in "Stop the Clocks".

First, the song establishes a normal breathing rhythm. From 2:37 to 2:42 there is a four chord progression: AEGD. These chords have a highly stable relationship. The interval between A and E is the same as interval between G and D (a descent of 5 half steps). These matched intervals separate the AEGD into two sets of one high chord and one low chord separated by the same intervals: AE and GD.

Listen to your breath. The "in" is a high note, the "out" is a low one. And if you are in a stable, relaxed condition, the difference between these pitches are proportionate.

This AEGD pattern is just like two breaths, one after another. It's high A ("inhale") to low E ("exhale"), high G ("inhale") to low D ("exhale").

What comes next from 2:42 to 2:46 is a mixed chord F7M/A, which rises to G. So while the first 4 chords establish a pattern of dropping from higher notes to lower notes, the next two chords rise.

This unexpected rise after these two stable pairs gives the feeling that something is not right. It's like you skipped a breath, had two inhales without an exhale. We'll call it the FG hyperventilation.

This pattern is repeated from 2:47 to 2:55. Then from 2:57 to 3:07, the FG section is repeated two additional times, prolonging the breathless state. So it goes:

AE GD FG
AE GD FG FG FG

The FG hyperventilation has been prolonged. The effect is an uncomfortable, unresolved expectation.

The song lays down this chord structure here so that it can manipulate it in the concluding solo.

The music stops at 4:00,  along with the singer's life we assume. His last words suggest he has concluded that "There'll be no sound". That there is nothing after death.

And for a couple of seconds there is no sound. Just his echoing voice.

But then the music comes back at 4:06. All of a sudden, the echo of "sound", doesn't feel like last words dying off into the vacuum, but a still present perception noticing: there is still "sound"!

Is this just the final paroxysm of a dying brain, or a bridge to an afterlife? Who knows. What we do know is that it's a very anxious experience.

From 4:06 to 4:10 the acoustic guitar plays the AEGD chords, then the FG hyperventilation from 4:10 to 4:13. The AEGD chords come back from 4:13 to 4:18; then there's another expected FG hyperventilation from 4:18 to 4:21. But then it's constant FG hyperventilation from 4:21 to 4:36 - 4 repeated FG hyperventilations. So whereas before in the AEGDFG progression we had two regular breaths and a FG hyperventilation, now we have a repeated FG hyperventilation at the end: AEGDFGFGFGFGFG.

There are no in and out breathes anymore, just hyperventilations. It makes this FG section from 4:21 to 4:36 especially anxiety-filled. It's a paralysis. When will the relief come? Pouring on the anxiety is the hysterical rise in pitch in the guitar from 4:29 to 4:35.

Finally at 4:37, the chords go back to AEGD - to breathing in and out. The AEGD chords are repeated 4 times: the FG hyperventilation chords are now completely gone.

The results is a newfound stability. The sound is still anxious, but whereas before the music was paralyzed, now it is heading somewhere. The person is still hysterical, judging by the high pitch and distortion of the solo guitar, and the instability of its melody, but something allows him to move now.

To me the anxious solo guitar is the conscious part of the person, growing in anxiety, and the chords are the body functions of the person, the subconscious things that allow it to function. From 4:21 to 4:36 the conscious solo guitar grows more and more anxious over the paralyzed, subconscious, FG repeating chords. It's like watching someone have a panic attack: the mind races, but the body is rooted to the spot.

After 4:36, the subconscious chords, now back in AEGD progression, no longer paralyze the conscious guitar, so it can finally move.

But where is it heading? The rise of the angelic choir at the end suggests it's headed upwards. But the song ends in silence. Has he gone up above, or did his malfunctioning brain just imagine it? I don't know.

Gorillaz - Demon Days

I have a fear of fainting. When I get out of bed, there’s a sinking sensation in the back of my head. It feels like someone pulled the stopper out of the bottom of the sink. I feel pressures inside my head, chest tightness, see spots and neon tracers. 

Most people feel these sensations then get on with it. When I feel them I get stuck. I think the twinge in my chest and cough is pneumonia, which could cause me to faint if I exert myself. I think a skipped heart beat is a dysrhythmia that could cause my heart to stop at any moment. 

Everything is dangerous. All day, surges of adrenaline from perceiving one thing, then the next, then the next, signal imminent collapse. In the morning, through the commute, during the day at work and on the way back my mind sounds a Penderecki threnody. After the day, when I feel safe, it feels like the overactivity has warped the physical material of my brain; my brain feels like a car engine after a road trip.  It’s hot and creaks and pops and hisses. What the creaks and pops and hisses tell me: there is no escape. 

It's true. There is no escape from body sensations. That's how we're built, to listen to them, it's how we survive.

What would help is a change in how I perceive them. 

I can continue to perceive them in the same way, and fall into a cycle of fear and exhaustion. The outcome: isolation, depression and missed opportunities. Or I can perceive them in a new way, feel them but not obsess over them, and not have them dictate my actions. The outcome: well Jesus I know it's not going to be roses and peaches, but at least I'll get out more. 

I’ve heard musical interpretations of shifts in perception. Some suggest that people have experienced a shift from despair to some hope. The best example to me is Gorillaz's “Demon Days”. 

How many times when I was at my low point, before I understood what was happening, I’d play "Demon Days", and be soothed. Its creator saw, understood and handed me this song. 

"Demon Days", the last song on the album, has enormous meaning when you consider the songs before it. Albarn’s lyrics are disconnected and vague, but they have specific concerns. Most of the songs focus on anxiety-filled modern day issues: school shootings (“Kids with Guns”), environmental issues (“O Green World”), war (“Dirty Harry”), loneliness (“All Alone”), alcoholism (“White Light”) and rapacious consumerism/colonialism (“Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head”). 

The listener is dragged through this anxious world and finally arrives at the second to last track: “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”. 

“Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” is deeply connected to the next track, “Demon Days”.  

“Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” is despair. It’s a special type of despair, Dostoevskian. Dostoevskian despair is deep despair under a veneer of false hope. It’s in The Double, when an overwhelmed clerk goes crazy and crashes a rich person’s party, thinking it was meant for him. Or in Crime and Punishment, in Raskolnikov, who, after being isolated for too long, goes up to a stranger and asks him if he likes the street music.  Or in Svidrigailov, who, overwhelmed by guilt, strolls through the streets, jokes with a stranger, then shoots himself. 

The deepest despair is thinly cloaked in politeness, humor and hope. This banal pleasantry is a hollow reminder of what the despair has taken away from the person. To see someone in complete despair imitate politeness, humor and optimism is like seeing a deer hit by a car try to take some steps before it dies. That’s what “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” is. 

The lyrics are depressing. They seem to be a quick reliving of the 13 despairing songs prior.  The singer deals with the anxiety of those songs by using drugs, which are directly or indirectly mentioned multiple times. 

The melody, if you can forget about Albarn’s dead-eyed delivery, sounds like a 50’s pop melody: old fashioned, wholesome. 

But the lyrics depart so much from that tone. Especially at 1:16 - Albarn is calling someone a whore: 

“you’re a whore…

yeah you’re a ha-whore” 

The melody here is like a verse ending flourish you’d hear in a ‘50s song, but the singer would sentimentally croon it and call her a peach instead of a whore.  

There is despair and anger in the lyrics and despondency in their delivery, all painted over with a Leave it to Beaver melody. The sum effect is Dostoevskian despair: deep despair with a veneer of politeness and cheer. 

Further adding to the off-putting feel are the choir bits, the disturbed choir moans from :08 to :10, :59 to 1:01,  1:22 to 1:24 and 1:40 to 1:42. They begin like they have the potential for beauty, but they lose their beauty and become strained and distorted. They embody the idea of “Getting Lost in Heaven”, of turning something potentially beautiful into something haunting. The electric guitar has a similar effect, is off key in a way similar to how the choir is off key.  

The above effects make this song despair. But all is not lost. 

There is a conflict between the despondent singer and the choir. The singer sings despair. But the choir responds, over and over, “don’t get lost in heaven”. The choir is saying, the place you are at can be heaven, if you’re not lost in it. Something inside the despairing person is telling him not to despair, not to turn to drugs, not to disconnect himself,  some spiritual force embodied in that choir. “You’ll make a big mistake,” it says to him, to go down this road of despair. 

At the end of the song, we even find that the disturbed choir moan (heard from from :08 to :10, :59 to 1:01,  1:22 to 1:24 and 1:40 to 1:42) has a seed of hope in it. At 1:35 to 1:37, the choir sings a consonant, almost soothing version. The distorted choir instantly responds back at 1:40. But then the soothing version sounds again at 1:43, and again at 1:50, and again at 1:58. That last time, it’s harmonized, making it especially beautiful, and it leads into the soothing violins of the next song, “Demon Days”. 

To me, there is a battle going on for the singer’s soul, between the disturbing moan version of this choir call, and the harmonized, soothing version of it. At first, the moan wins out, but at a certain point, the soothing version takes over. 

To me it’s a sonic metaphor for that undercurrent of despair that fights with hope inside the despairing. And it seems all the more true, that the despair is a broken version of the hope - it seems true that despair isn’t its own thing as much as it is a broken hope. 

From here comes “Demon Days”. It’s not triumphant, but there is a sober enlightenment to it. It’s dealing with the world, it’s found some peace. 

The backbone of the first part of “Demon Days” and “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” are the same. Their basic structure is a two chord harmony, one long chord and then one long chord slightly above it. 

The songs don’t just share a basic structure, but also specific melodies. “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”’s queasy lead guitar from :03 to :09 gets translated into Albarn’s somewhat sad but still soothing “wooo-oooos” from from :19 to :26 in “Demon Days”. It’s the same tune. 

These similarities reinforce that we are still in the same world as “Don't Get Lost in Heaven”, we are just seeing it form a different perspective: we’ve gone from seeing the world through despair to seeing the world through hope. 

I love the violins in the beginning of “Demon Days”. It takes about 14 seconds for them to go through one cycle. During this time, there are two violin layers. 

The first layer is the prominent one, it’s the one that lifts dramatically at :04. There’s two phrases of the first violin layer in those first 14 seconds. One dramatically and satisfyingly rises at :04.  The next phrase is similar, but instead of rising, it holds its level. :11 is where the second phrase should rise, if it were to follow the example of the first phrase, but instead it restates the note it has been playing, and then falls off. To me it suggests, sometimes you will rise, sometimes you will just endure.  

The general tone of the violin is beautiful: melancholic but hopeful. It gives the impression of seeing hope through tears. 

The second layer of violin compliments the first layer. The second layer is best heard from :07 to :14, when the first layer is holding its note. From :08 to :10, I can’t help but see a mother’s hand beckoning, can’t help seeing a mother goose motioning with its wing at a wayward duckling. To me the violin from :08 to :10 sounds like it’s saying “hurry home; hurry, hurry home”. And I don’t just mean metaphorically: I hear those words. That cadence, that pitch produces those words. It’s the mother violin. It’s a voice from singer’s past, beckoning him back to the right path. 

After this soothing introduction is a series of developments that suggest transformation from despair to hope. At :19, we hear the queasy guitar lead melody from “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”, except now it is a soulful, soothing vocal. 

At the same time, we hear a guitar fuzz that lets off at :23. That fuzz comes back at :26, then lets off again. Then comes back at :35 and sustains itself. To me that fuzz is tension, it’s the tension of a limp hand making a fist, and then going limp, making a fist and then letting go, and then finally, making a fist and holding it. The song is fighting again. 

The best touch is at :23. A disturbing howl sounds, reverberates underground, gets drawn out, until finally, at :30, it transforms into the choir, into something pure and declarative. This is the part that brings chills every time. It’s the song in a nutshell, transforming a disturbed, despondent howl into pure, strong, resilience. This resilience comes back at 1:23. It bolsters the singer, whose lyrics and melody are mixed, generally hopeful but oscillating a little, stringing together some hope and momentum at 1:10, but falling down a little after that, before it’s picked up by the choir at 1:23. 

Then the song quiets down, and becomes a reggae hymn. If reggae’s not your thing, it might disappoint. But it still gets across the message, the journey of the singer from despair in “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”, to some hard won, sober enlightenment in the first 2 minutes of “Demon Days”, to some less dramatic, sustainable ease in a better daily life that the pop reggae suggests. 

He’s made it, transformed the Penderecki threnody to Bob Marley. 

I know, from how this song feels, that its writer has despaired, but found a way to shift his perception. Not permanently, I bet. But he’s done it once, and he’ll do it again. Thank God for music. 

James Newton Howard - Unbreakable: Weightlifting

In 2001 Uncle Pat returned a favor to dad with a DVD player.

The family crowded around the TV awaiting a revelation in picture and sound.  A blue sky, clearer than life, with pure white clouds filled the screen, background for a monolith that read “Sony”. In an azure box in the screen’s top right corner: “Insert DVD”. 

That’s when we realized we had to buy DVDs.  

An eternity later mom took us to Sam’s Club. As we passed the DVD section, I, at my mother's side, like a four foot Wormtongue, noted that some $29.99 DVDs were marked down to $17.88. 

Mom never bought one of us a twenty dollar item because then she’d have to buy five of us a twenty dollar item.  But somehow, the wholesale price, my excitement and the $300 paperweight in her living room changed her. She bought Unbreakable for me. 

They don’t make DVD cases like Unbreakable’s anymore. A black and blue sleeve with a window to a beautifully designed “Unbreakable” logo: reflective gray lines and jagged blue smoke evoking broken glass and the supernatural. The case folded out. Two DVDs - one for the movie, one for “special features”, whatever those were. 

Most memorable was the FBI warning, which unexpectedly shattered into pieces with a crack I used to show off DVD quality sound. 

The DVD player's remote had dozens of buttons, each linked to functions I later used to dissect my favorite movies. There was an “AB Repeat”, used to watch Trinity’s first jump on an endless loop. “Step” pushed the movie forward one frame at a time so I could make flip book recreations of The Phantom Menace's lightsaber duels. The “Next Chapter” button skipped to all my favorite Fellowship of the Ring parts in seconds (before that you had to fast forward through the whole damn tape). I slow motioned every fight scene, becoming aware of the editing tricks.  

All this would come later.  But it all started with Unbreakable.

Unbreakable means even more to me. My father was a cop.  When I was young he never spoke to me about patrol, but I’d hear snatches of stories, of him wresting a gun from a criminal, of shots in the streets, of ramming fugitive motorcycles in the patrol car. I’d see the worn leather holster on his ankle when he sat down to dinner, and hear him unload his revolver before he went to sleep, hear the bullets fall into his hand.

My dad was a cop, a good one, who risked his life to help people. He was over six foot and built like a rugby player. I was an undersized, bookish kid. If you’ve seen Unbreakable, you know how I could relate to its father-son dynamic. 

But it was more than that. Specific moments of the film were ripped from my life, like the benchpress scene. Sometimes before work dad went down to the basement to lift weights. He’d be on the bench while I sat on the stationary bike reaching for the pedals. He’d tell me while he benched, “pushups are the way to go, don’t worry about benching. Pushups are the full body work out”, which was his way to discourage me from trying out the bench when he wasn’t there. He’d give me a hand grip strengthener, saying it was the most important: “If, when you first grab the bad guy, your grip is strong, you scare the shit out of them, they won’t mess with you”. As he curled his fingers around the bar, my dad told me, almost exactly as Bruce Willis does: “If anything bad happens, get Mom”.

On top of that, Unbreakable's weightlifting scene appealed because it is masterfully filmed. Bruce Willis’s character David Dunn adds more and more weight to his bench at the prodding of his son, so that they can determine his max. Finally, all available weights are attached to the bar. Dunn seems to struggle, but he benches this impossible weight several times. It’s almost proof that he has superhuman capabilities. 

Dunn’s so strong, he even benches the weight of the camera: as he drops the bar down the camera falls; as he pushes up, the camera lifts. On his next rep the camera forgets this convention and settles in disbelief on Dunn's face. Great filmmaking. 

But even better than the camera was the score. 

All the above, the specific manner in which I related to this scene, I didn’t realize that was happening. I just felt a compulsion to watch the scene over and over. From the same impulse I found and downloaded the music to the scene, which is called “Weightlifting”. 

For years I’d listen to "Weightlifting", most of the time in the car or in bed, just visualizing the scene, syncing it to the music in my head. 

At some point, I read about a piece of music in film, how it developed with a character, and reached its full form when the character did (it was from soundtrackreviews.com, a site, that while at times pretentious and dismissive of non-orchestra music, is remarkable for its reviews’ focus on musical analysis).

So my first step in unravelling the mystery of this song’s power over me, was recognizing that its central conceit is the development of a theme, Bruce Willis’s character’s David Dunne’s hero theme.

You can here a full rendition of the theme at :22 in “The Orange Man”. 

There are two parts to the theme. Part A is the build from :23 to :29. Part B, :30 to :37, is a repeated flourish that overflows that build. The A build is not much more than a D note, to a dominant 5th A, to a higher D. That may seem like it has no meaning to you, but it does. It’s a known progression that somehow sounds elemental and heroic. John Williams’ Superman theme manipulates the same note proportions, as does the beginning of Strauss’ "Also Sprach Zarathustra". 

So Howard picked an elemental and heroic set of notes for his hero. Then he played them at a rate that matches the hero’s arc. The first two notes are held for a long time, then the following notes come quick: the A part of the theme is hesitant to take on its full heroic nature. Just like David Dunn, we are uncertain for a long time as to whether the theme will accept that it is a hero.  

The B part of the theme plays around that high D note, that is, plays around the fulfillment of the heroic nature, and repeats, restates its own heroic nature: it’s accepted that it is a hero. The theme’s composition is an outline for David Dunn’s character progression, his acceptance that he has superhuman abilities.

Whenever the theme is fully stated in the movie, it’s when David Dunn accepts that he has superhuman capabilities. But, for the most of the movie he doesn’t accept this. So, for most of the movie, Howard only gives us quiet or truncated versions of this theme. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than “Weightlifting”. In the piece, we keep getting weak versions of the theme, or halves of it. 

At the very the beginning, there are two repetitions of the A part of the theme (not part B). Dunn has the realization that he can bench an unexpected amount of weight. Something remarkable happened, but not out of the realm of normal possibility. Dunn is not convinced that he is superhuman. So only the A part of the theme is played, and it’s played vaguely and with minimal accompaniment. 

Then at :41 the A part of the theme comes back twice, stronger. Once as a lone trumpet, once as a bunch of strings with accompaniment. This coincides with Dunn being able to bench even more weight. 

 At 1:01, we finally hear the B part of the theme, but it’s high and vague, almost spectral, and unnaturally extenuated, trailing off.  

At 1:17, the A part repeats twice. There is something interesting rhythmically going on underneath. We’ll come back to it soon. 

Finally at 1:42 the hero theme plays, still not in full grandeur, but with strong accompaniment. It’s the first strong statement of the full theme. It coincides with Dunn lifting what is almost certainly a superhuman amount of weight. 

But more happens at 1:47. There is a dramatic lift to the music here that comes from something other than the choice of instruments or their volume or the playing of the theme. 

I remember being on a 12 hour trip in my family’s E-350, listening over and over to this part, trying to figure out what gives this section its extra left. 

The answer is rhythm. Contrast the rhythm of the song from 1:17 to 1:47, with from 1:47 on. Rhythm is hard to nail down, but just feel the music and see how your foot taps to it. From 1:17, my foot taps to the piano rhythm, that delicate, tentative, but magical piano. It’s a quick rhythm, to me it sounds like…for example, from 1:18 to 1:21 (one cycle of the piano piece) - that sounds like 6 beats to me, three sets of 2 beats (the first four of which sound like a ping pong between two notes on the piano). That pattern is repeated until 1:43.

Now there is an almost rhythmless span between here and 1:46. This is the precise moment in the film when Dunn lifts the weigh off its rest and lets the weight drop. 

Rhythm is a very soothing aspect of music, because it lets us know what our immediate future will be: our future will be this beat, over and over. But right here, we come to a part in the movie where the future isn’t certain: will Dunn lift the weight? Accordingly, the rhythm becomes less certain. 

Right at the end of 1:43, a big drum sounds. This is an amazing touch. 

Do you lift? There is a moment after you lift the weight off its hold when you feel the weight come down on you: that’s what that drum represents. The end of the quick, weak piano rhythm marks the moment when Dunn’s made the decision to go into the unknown and lift the weight; that drum at 1:43 is the moment an instant later when he can feel the full weight press down on his palms. 

The rhythm of the next section, the section that finally strongly states the hero theme, becomes apparent at 1:47, with a drum beat and a sustained bass harmony. It’s a much slower rhythm then the piano rhythm we had before, and I think that’s what gives this section so much more strength. 

The rhythm is so slow that the first beat is at 1:47, but the second doesn’t come until 1:49. That doesn’t seem slow on paper, but it’s an eternity in sound. Consider that from 1:18 to 1:21, we heard 6 full beats of the weak piano rhythm. Here, it takes almost 2 seconds for 1 full beat. 

That longer beat, along with the muscular, singular bass emphasizing it, gives the undercurrent of the first statement of the theme so much more strength. Each beat is holding up seconds of music, instead of fractions of seconds. 

The difference in rhythmic strength is like the difference between New Year’s Resolution John blasting 6 reps of just the bar (the weak 6 beat piano measure from 1:18 to 1:21) vs. Arnold doing 5 slow, controlled reps of 200 lbs.  (the 5 beats from 1:47 to 1:59). 

So Howard sonically recreates the experience of lifting a large amount of weight, mostly through rhythm: the nervous expectation is in the quick, weak rhythm of the piano; the feeling of the weight crushing down on you is in that first drum beat at 1:43; the growing strength and resolve of a well done rep is in that strong, slow rhythm and bass from 1:47 on.

The use of rhythm here was a revelation for me, laying on that car bench on a long road trip. It came to me through feel: I observed how my hand impulsively waved to the music, how from 1:17 my hand moved quickly with the piano, and how from 1:47 it moved slowly and deliberately with the bass and drum. 

Up until this point, I was a fair observer of melody, but barely registered rhythm. This piece changed me. “Weighlifting”’s rhythmic shift had been playing on me for years without my notice, keeping me coming back. Its effect still leaves me speechless, even though its mystery is gone. Melody is interesting. Rhythm is powerful. People are the same as music. Unnoticed rhythms drive our feelings and actions. Do you hear them? 

EXTRA: "The Wreck", from 1:00 to 2:30, is another highlight. There’s this descending bass of dread that marks Dunn’s fear for his girlfriend and an anxious hopeful build at 1:35, especially in the violin flourish from 1:44 to 1:47, when he sees there is a chance to save her. 

All the while a strange rhythmic uniformity builds great tension. At 1:59 a violin hit cuts through the tension, and then everything but the strings falls out as we see Dunn use his superhuman strength to save her.  A powerful rendition of the theme gathers. 

The 1:59 violin hit that coincides with Dunn bending the door is one of my favorite moments in film. I think it’s because, before that point, the music scores ours and teenager Dunn’s dread. But after that point, it scores ours and present-day Dunn’s recognition that Dunn is superhuman. 

I think what gets me is that while we experience that recognition through this triumphant music after 1:59, the teenager Dunn of the memory doesn’t recognize it. On screen underneath the triumphant music, we still see an extremely anxious Dunn. He is oblivious to the fact that he just did something impossible. He is so focused on saving the girl.  

To me that is beautiful. To push yourself to do something that every single person who witnessed it would see as superhuman, but to not notice it yourself, because you are so focused on helping someone else. His self disappeared. That’s love. This emotional aspect is not visible in the visuals, the music communicates it. 

Radiohead - 15 Step

Whenever Thom Yorke shrill pierced my ears in high school I threw the headphones across the room. 

Later, a disaffected college friend gave me The Bends. 

Before The Bends my music universe was the Greenday and Limp Bizkit tracks I traded my Drake’s apple pies for a listen, the Led Zeppelin my '70s drummer track coach insisted was best, and The White Stripes. 

Each of these rocks had a unique flavor, but most of their experiments were references to the past, or to other genres, or, as with Zeppelin, didn’t register as such, since Zeppelin stood alone and immovable as Stonehenge, had always been what it was. 

The Bends was still rock, but now there was something more. 

I couldn’t stop listening to “Just”. The build up of the chorus guitar, and especially, the extended build in last chorus (from 2:45 to 3:10), brought me back again and again. 

It’s four repetitions going up the scale, each time lifting an octave, suggesting approach to a climax. Then, the guitar maxes out with a sustained pitch. The song feels like it’s about to end, but picks up and stumbles on, a desperate lead guitar over exhausted descending chords. 

The end guitar didn’t learn the chorus guitar’s lesson. The end guitar just repeated it and shifted it upwards again and again and turned it into something as shrill and negative as Thom Yorke’s voice. It did it to itself. 

I also enjoyed the janky “My Iron Lung” and later had a lot of fun playing it on guitar. The transition two minutes in from stultified electric ballad to cagey depressed punk is fun as hell to play. Even a guitarist who can’t subtly emote can provide contrast between the two sides of this transition just by feeling the music, by going from gentle to hard on the frets and the pick. 

These hard to digest but satisfying touches kept me with Radiohead until I completely, or as completely as anyone can, adapted to Thom Yorke. When my listening attention was somewhere in the middle I could still hear him, but when listening casually or intensely I could not. 

Around this time Radiohead offered In Rainbows for free download, or not free, but whatever you decided to pay, which meant, free (please support Monophone on Patreon).  As with most new albums, the first listen disappointed. I still don’t get “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” and “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”. They have an improvisational feel, as if the band came to the mic with nothing but misplaced confidence and these songs were the result. 

But I love “15 Step”. My favorite part is the middle, but there are so many other interesting things about this song. 

First, it’s written in 5/4 time. This means it's built on a repetition of 5 beats. So much of what we listen to is based on 2 or 3 beats or multiples thereof. For you computer people, I think the reason why it’s 2 and 3 has something to do with the RAM of the brain, with what the brain can hold in instant use memory. The next prime number after 2 and 3 is 5 - and that pushes the limits of our RAM. 

For you chocolate inclined: 5 beats is too big to be swallowed. In 2 and 3 based music and multiples thereof, we’re eating snack sized and regular sized Twix, they go down quickly and well enough. But 5 beat music is like king sized Twix: that’s pushing it. You have to ask yourself, at what point is it a Twix bar, at what point is it an indeterminate mass of chocolate and caramel? It seems like the tipping point is 5 beats. 

The brain is not used to the 5 beat structure, so Radiohead eases us into it. 

The beginning of the song is a sonic mess - static, crunchy, disjunct beats - for the most part, formless. A metaphor for what 5/4 sounds like to our brains. 

But one sound distinguishes itself. Every once in a while, you’ll hear BUMF - the bass drum. It marks the beginning of each 5 beat structure. So when we hear it, we know one measure has passed and another just began. You can use that BUMF to discern the 5 beat structure, even though the crunchy digital drums and the off kilter clapping try to disguise it.

The result is twofold: in the cacophony, the music gives you one definitive BUMF to orient yourself. You hold on to and recognize that BUMF because its the only thing that is clearly distinguishable. 

At the same time, the cacophony here provides a contrast for the slightly less cacophonous, but still 5/4 beat to come. 

This is crucial. Imagine the song without the cacophonous beginning, if it started at 24 seconds. You would be dropped into an unsettling 5/4 world. However, by having an even more bizarre 24 seconds first, dropping into 5/4 world at 24 seconds becomes a comfort. Now when you drop into it, you are already oriented by the BUMF, that is, you know where the measures begin and end. 

Not the thing itself, but what proceeds it, makes the thing less strange. The talking rabbit probably discomfited Alice more than Queen of Hearts, because before Alice saw the Queen of Hearts, she had seen a talking rabbit. 

The melody starts at :41. I love it because there is something circular, flowing and smooth about it. Like water in some state between liquid and solid. 

What gives it this quality is how the high and low notes of the guitar play against each other. On the downbeat, at the beginning of each measure, is a bass note, then a series of higher notes. The higher notes are trending down towards the next bass note. When that bass note sounds, it’s both the end of the higher notes, and the bass note for the next set of higher notes. This is possible because the bass note is the last note of the higher notes, but shifted down an octave, so it’s also low enough to be the bass for the next phrase. 

So that note occupies two states. In the same way, we are so used to 2 beat and 4 beat measures, that the fifth beat confuses the brain, makes uncertain whether the note is in the current measure or the next measure - the last beat of each measure occupies two states rhythmically, just as that bass notes occupies two states for the melody. This makes the transition between these phrases smooth, almost otherworldly. 

The second verse is the most remarkable part, but the first verse must be explored because it sets up the second. 

To me everything is prelude until :53. Then there’s 12 measures that make the first part of verse 1. Here the music composition is simple. Guitar with a little bass and a little melody and drums. Actually, the drums are complex, the beat and the overlay of handclaps. But that complexity has lost its strangeness, since we’ve been listening to it for almost a minute by now. 

There is almost no development or variation in these 12 measures. The only element that alters is the lyrics. Finally, at 1:12 is a build up, layers are added, giving momentum.  Rocking cymbals. The bass kicks in. The lead guitar modulates up, suggesting it’s heading towards climax. Yorke holds each word he sings much longer than before (“onnnnnnee byyyyyyyyyy onnnnnnneeee…”)

This is a great build up, but it’s still basic. Modulating up the melody, bringing more bass, lengthening the vocal notes and crashing cymbals are standard pop methods for giving a structure more power. It’s satisfying, but unoriginal. 

What happens next is a deconstruction and then rebuilding of musical momentum. At 1:45 all aspects of the preceding music are present, but flattened out. The guitar melody is simplified, rocking back and forth between two chords instead of the four chord progression it had before. The vocals change from fully formed thoughts expressed in words to a moan, a one pitch moan that eerily builds up. The bass goes from a four chord harmony to one single repeated note. The drums go from a dynamic beat to almost random hits building into a drum roll. 

This is the same music we have been listening to, but it’s folded into itself, flattening from three dimensions to two. Still the drums and the rising vocal indicate buildup… and then at 1:57 we’re back, the music gets expanded to three dimensions again. 

You often experience an effect like this in pop rock songs, where the music is quiet for a while and then gets loud all of a sudden. Often it goes from loud electric to soft acoustic and then back to loud electric again. Radiohead here performs the calculus equivalent of that algebra. Instead of lowering and raising volume, this music lowers and raises its complexity. The brain recognizes this without knowing it does, and I think that’s why the transition at 1:57 feels so good. It’s both unexpected and expected, it leaves you a little breathless. 

But now, where do we go from here? You’re primed to think verse 2 is going to continue to raise the stakes by how the stakes have been raised in verse 1. Even more so, because cymbals are present at the beginning of verse 2, the cymbals which didn’t come in till late in verse 1. So it’s a fair assumption that, because verse 2 starts at a more musically complex place than verse 1, it will end at a more complex place. 

But at 2:03 the cymbals die off. If you have difficulty hearing the cymbals, just listen to when he sings “et cetera, et cetera”. It sounds like things have calmed down.

All that has changed is the cymbals stopped. But why? Why step down the musical complexity here? We’ve already been at this level of complexity, and we’re supposed to be going someplace further. 

Here I think, we see how the musical choices work with the lyrics. So far, Yorke has been whining about something that keeps happening to him: 

How come I end up where I started 

How come I end up where I belong

Won’t take my eyes off the ball again

You reel me out then you cut the string 

To me it sounds like some girl keeps winding him up and then betraying him over and over, and  he’s frustrated he never learns his lesson. That’s not necessarily what the lyrics mean, but the sense that something keeps happening to him again and again with bad results, and that he is frustrated,  is certainly in the lyrics. 

So while verse 1 develops in a standard way, verse 2 feels like it’s going to ramp up the tension with the cymbals, then it hits us with these unexpected, disjointed developments: silencing the cymbals at 2:03, hitting us with a little bass at 2:08, having children yell at 2:13, using a strange echo effect at 2:18. 

The conventional means of developing music exhibited in verse 1 are thrown out. Instead, jarring stops and strange fragments texture the music. 

Why? Did Radiohead just want to be edgy, different, say ”Fuck your expectations. Cut the cymbals and bring out the children’s choir”?

Perhaps, but I think they were also trying to compliment the lyrics here. The first verse is about a disgruntled guy, tired of being wronged. He’s even taking his oppressor to task: 

You used to be alright

What happened? 

Did the cat get your tongue? 

Did your string come undone?

Those last two questions are rhetorical, nagging and sarcastic. He’s having it out with the person who wronged him. 

In verse 2, he’s doing the same thing:

You used to be alright

What happened?

But here, instead of coming up with a accusatory question, he just says:

Etcetera, etcetera

It’s like he’s started to have it out with his oppressor, but tires and gives up even trying to come up with a good nag. The next line has the same character: 

Facts for whatever 

He’s not putting any thought into this confrontation any more. It has happened so many times before and now he is tired of it. 

It reminds me of Groundhog Day, movies of that type. The main character has been through this so many times before, he’s just rushing through his lines and half paying attention so he can get to the next part. 

The music I think, compliments this mind state. Whereas the verse 1 music builds into a nagging accusal, the verse 2 music is about to, but gives up at 2:03 (the same time the man in the lyrics gives up: “et cetera, et cetera”). Then, just like Bill Murray might, when reliving the same scene for the 20th time, he doesn't pay attention, just looks out the window.  So too does the music unexpectedly concern itself with a little bass at 2:08. At 2:13, it looks over at a TV with a children’s cartoon on and hears “YEAH!” At 2:18, the music is so used to the words it’s supposed to say, that it’s listening to how funny they sound, as represented by the echo of “15 steps”. 

The music is bored of this progression, of being angry at this person, of reacting and working up anger. This is the part where he’s supposed to get angry, so he gets angry, but his heart’s just not in the anger anymore. He’s experienced this too many times. 

The musical attention deficit we experience reinforces the experience of the lyrics.  

That’s why I love this song. So much musical meaning in two minutes. 

I didn't consciously think the above analysis until I sat down to write it. It was a wordless feeling of the musical quality, the music's gravity, that kept me in Radiohead's orbit until I acclimatized to Thom Yorke. 

Now when I listen to music and hear something off-putting, and start to raise my hand to the headphones to throw them across the room, I keep them on for a couple of seconds to feel for any pull.