Loudness

The other day at work (how many blog entries start this way? Anyway) I put on some Radiohead.  Radiohead is difficult for me to judge on the whole, can-I-get-this-past-the-censors scale - some songs are just fine, and everybody likes.  Some ("Bodysnatchers") get the reaction I got the other day - "Change that. (a few seconds pass) Sorry, I just can't take that. It's not comforting."

It was the "not comforting" that I found interesting.  I know my opinion is slightly skewed, but I don't consider "Bodysnatchers" all that cacophonous a song, especially for Radiohead.  If it had been "My Iron Lung" or something, sure.  But "Bodysnatchers" is just a heavy riff, with a little of their trademarked theremin guitar noises going on.

It reminds me of a quote I heard someone (maybe Peter Buck?) say about Nick Drake.  He said "even if the volume is all the way up, Nick Drake still sounds quiet" and this I absolutely agree with - I've never once been asked to change Nick Drake, unless it's three o'clock and we're all falling asleep.  Loudness, it seems, is only tangentially related to volume.


Surely part of the Radiohead v. Nick Drake difference is electric guitar vs. acoustic guitar.  But I don't think that's the whole story.  "Street Spirit" is a quiet song, but still electric (and still intense, adding a third dimension to this) and a lot of the mainstream guitar pop out there - Oasis, Matchbox Twenty, etc. - wouldn't have provoked the same response from my boss.  And he used the word "comforting" which leads me to believe that what he meant above all, was dissonant.

Dissonance of course is Radiohead's primal state.  They love guitar riffs that clash, or fail to resolve, or resolve differently than you expect.  "Electioneering" of course, but also "Myxomatosis" and "Bangers and Mash".  But, from experience with my boss, it's not just those songs, but "Idioteque" and "Everything in its Right Place" that seem loud, or chaotic.

Iron and Wine is another band I can almost always get away with - even at his most aggressive (which admittedly isn't very) he seems 'quiet'.  Interestingly enough, Sufjan Stevens, who rarely pushes the volume any further than Iron and Wine, gets a raised eyebrow at the very least, at work.  The banjo opening to "All the Trees of the Field..." has more in common with Radiohead, I think, than Nick Drake.