Counterpoint

I'm a huge White Stripes fan, so naturally I bought the Raconteurs album when it came out.  I was expecting, basically, Jack White-punk with some Brendan Benson powerpop elements.  What surprised me, therefore, was how much more texture the album had than a typical Stripes album.  The addition of keyboards especially was revelatory.  My favorite song on the album quickly became "Intimate Secretary."  It's an unusually structured song; instead of verse-chorus-verse it's more ABAB.  There are two melodies, and it goes back and forth between the two sections (a little like the Beatles "We can work it out") - but the prestige is the coda, where everything drops away except a bubbling keyboard part, and then they bring the full band back little by little, with both the A and B melodies over the same part.

Two melodies simultaneously is called counterpoint, and Bach was basically the master of it (see, this, for example).  It remains more a classical thing than a rock thing, which is too bad because it can be breathtaking, as in the Raconteurs example.

Still, it got me thinking of other songs that do the same thing.  Sure enough, Mates of State "So Many Ways" does - Kori Gardner sings the first verse, then Jason Hammel sings the same melody (and lyrics) on the second as she sings a new melody (and new lyrics).  The gradual addition reminds me of canon - in classical music, where a single melody plays, then another takes over, and more and more voices are added on, until the limits of sanity are reached.

I've only ever encountered one rock canon - "Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space" by Spiritualized - and it is textbook canon.  A simple instrumental backs up a vocal - "All I want in life's a little love to take the pain away, getting strong today, a giant step each day-y-y" which repeats while another vocal comes in on top "Wise men say, only fools rush in, only fools rush in." and then a third voice enters, and they swirl around each other while the background music builds.  One of the things about recording in a studio, rather than with an orchestra, is that you can manage an effect Spiritualized has here - the various voices come to the foreground, drop away, etc. in the mix.

There's one other Counterpoint Rock song I can think of, and it's also the only rock song I ever played to a certain classical friend that blew him away.  Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair".  They actually took the folk song "Canticle" and worked it in with the melody to "Scarborough Fair" in counterpoint - and then as a bonus they had the instrumentation build from guitar to include drums, harpsichord, and so on.

What was interesting to me, thinking about these songs, is that every one of these songs is my favorite song for the various bands.  I wonder why.