Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks, Dirty Paws

I lived in a DC basement that spit out to an alley. Each day I crossed paths with the students, unpaid interns and poverty-line entry level professionals who lived in the other basements that spit out to the alley. But I only remember one name.

"al-EES," she said.

Her lips made the blushing smile peculiar to young German women speaking English, which seems to grace all words passing through with a singsong.

What a sound she gave it. How was it spelt? Did it have an umlaut? Did it end in "ß"? Where have I heard an "EES" like that before, what's that word? "Elysium".

That night Hunt for the Red October was on. Alec Baldwin was tracking down a Russian (a great shot). It reminded me of a Russian I once talked to, who kept telling me his name was "Alec".

"Alec," I said. "Strange name for a Russian."

"No, not 'Alec'," he said. "'Alec'".

"Alec," I said.

"No, no," he said. He wrote it down.

"Oleg," it said.

In Russian the name "Oleg" has a stress on the second syllable. The deemphasized "O" sounds more like an "A". The "g"s at the end of Russian words lose their gutturalness and become "c"s. So "Oleg" sounds a lot like "Alec".

"al-EES". That's when I realized her name was "Alice". A frumpy name in English. But in her German accent, with the stress shifted from the first syllable to the second, "Alice" had magic.

After she said her name I wanted to meet her again. I'd see her when I took the early bus. For the next week I took it.

No sign of her. On the weekend someone else moved in to her basement.

But I never forgot her name. It was the unfamiliar stress, and that all the letters sounded familiar and foreign at the same time. It was beautifully uncanny.

This is why so many foreign actors successfully play Americans. Even in excellent American accents, we sense something a little off, something that comes from a world with which we are not familiar. As a result the accent holds our rapt attention.

See Alicia Vikander in Bourne. Kelly Reilly in True Detective. Michelle Dockery in Non Stop. Damian Lewis in Band of Brothers. Michael Fassbender in X-Men. Gary Oldman in The Dark Knight. These voices sound American but here and there something is too old-fashioned, too nasal, too flat or too varied in tone. Little pieces of their native accents float up, like black specks from a Brita filter.

The same happens with vocalists. I could overanlayze any song from any band that has a singer with an accent. What I'm most interested in are singers whose first languages are not English, but who create songs in English for English speaking audiences.

These singers try, whether consciously or subconsciously, as best they can to sound like native speakers, in order to connect with English speaking mass markets. For any listener who argues this is not a concern - turn on the radio in Russia or Japan. To most native English speakers, especially Americans, misused idioms, awkward phrasing and awful pronunciation provoke disgust. Americans won't listen very long and if they do, it'll be with bemused condescension.

But some singers hit that sweet spot. Their tone, accent and phrasing sound more or less native, but a pleasant otherworldliness is present in slight, unexpected variations. I doubt the singers are even conscious of them. But we hear them and it grabs our attention.

Take the Icelandic group "Of Monsters and Men". Their two hits' "Little Talks" and "Dirty Paws" mixture of earnestness and artsiness could be misconstrued as American, maybe from some green hills between the Mormons and NorCal. The band's name seems to be a play on the title of a book by the great American writer Steinbeck. But their occasional strange phrasing, muddied vowels and unorthodox stresses are unfamiliar to the American ear.

See "Dirty Paws" at :51:

The dragonfly it ran away

But it came back with a story to say

"A story to say?" Who says that? As simple as those words are, and as easily understood their meaning is, I have never heard it put that way. The more familiar phrasing is: "But it came back with a story to tell". 

There are subtle differences between "to tell" and "to say". "To say" is often used to report speech: "He said the dragonfly ran away". "To tell" is more often used when the importance is not in the speech, but that it was reported to someone: "He told me the dragonfly ran away". The subtle difference between the meanings seems to have caused the words to conflate in the songwriter's mind. He seemed to think they were synonymous, and could be interchanged in any context. But they can't without it sounding strange.  

You could say it's poetic license, that the songwriter was conscious of the distinction but chose "say" anyway because he needed a word that rhymes with "away". That's possible. But the evidence mounts. 

"Dirty Paws" as a whole has a charming, childlike fairy tale quality. Two factors contribute. First, it is full of fantastic animals with human emotions: dragonflies, bees, beasts, birds, furry friends. Second, it free associates. Look at the below italicized words:

...

My head, is an animal

And once there was an animal

It had a son that mowed the lawn

The son was an OK guy

They had a pet dragonfly

The dragonfly it ran away

...

She ran down the forest slope

The forest of talking trees

They used to sing about the birds and the bees

The bees had declared war

...

Most of the lines are free association with the end of the last line. It's like listening to a child make up a fairy tale on the spot, not knowing where it is going, but using the last word of each sentence to begin the next sentence: "My head is an animal, oh yes, there was an animal, he had a son, the son had a dragonfly, the dragonfly ran away...she ran down the forest, the forest had trees, the trees had bees, the bees declared war..."

Alternatively, it's like listening to a children's book, whose primary focus is to teach the child forest vocab. It may be coincidence, but once again, there is a hint of language learning here. How much more likely is someone who remembers learning a second language to write a song like this?

But to go back to strange phrasing. Another strange phrase seen above is "the birds and the bees". Any native English speaker instantly associates the phrase "the birds and the bees" with sex ed. That phrase is reserved for sex ed. Why is it here, in a storybook song, that seems to have no concern for the sexual? Perhaps they put it in to be clever, but maybe they had just heard the phrase and liked the ring of it, and put it in the song, not knowing the context it was normally used in. 

"Little Talks" at :46 has more awkward phrasing: 

Cause though the truth may vary

This ship will carry our bodies back to shore

"Bodies"? "Bodies" most often has an inanimate quality. It is often used synonymously with "corpse". Once again, I don't think this is the meaning intended. The song deals with death, so there's room for a corpse-like word like "bodies". But if you listen to the lyrics, the chorus seems to be a refuge from death within the song. So why sully it with the word "bodies"? It seems to be a misuse.

Still these misuses giving the song a certain poetry - a freshness in the use of words that a native speaker is incapable of. 

The same effect is audible in unexpected stresses. At :29 in "Dirty Paws" is sung "aniMAL" - the stress is shifted from the first syllable to the third. Once again this could be poetic license. The meter calls for this stress. But if the songwriter was a native English speaker, would he even think to use the word "animal" here? Seeing words without their stress is so much easier when those words are in a second language. The same goes for "For a while..." at 2:26. The tendency for native speakers is to put the stress on "while", but here the stress is put on "for". 

In addition, vowels are often muddied. Of Monsters and Men loves the "a" sound, and tries to pronounce it even when vowels other than "a" are present. At :40 in "Dirty Paws", "pet" is said like "pat". At 2:45, "friends" like "frands". At 1:26 in "Little Talks" "buried" like "barried". 

The sum effect is something that sounds familiar, but with deviances here and there that spice up what would otherwise be ordinary.

It reminds me of my dad, the son of working class Irish immigrants, who all through our childhood forced us to respond to "What's the motto to Boston College?" with "Effort to Excel".

When my sister visited Boston she searched campus for the motto. She found gold letters on a red post. They read: "Ever to Excel". My dad was wrong.

But what does "Ever to Excel" mean anyway? It sounds like the self-assuring chant of a noble bloodline gone to seed. Or a luxury car tagline.  "Effort to Excel" makes much more sense.

There is magic in some mistakes. A tired language needs newcomers to fuck it up and inject fresh, vital meaning.

EXTRA - Jacqueline Taieb's "7AM" and Cibo Matto's "Birthday Cake" have less subtle, but still great sounding foreign touches.