Issue 34

Album: Goths

Artist: The Mountain Goats

45 RPM – 3 LP Deluxe Edition

Release: Merge records, May, 2017

Goths is the SIXTEENTH (!!) full-length studio album from the Durham, North Carolina foursome, The Mountain Goats, fronted by the timeless (vampire!) John Darnielle. Throughout their previous 15 albums, The Mountain Goats have put together some of the most compelling singalong melodies ever heard, coupled with lyrics straight out of a psychiatrist’s session notes. Previous albums (all worthy of a listen, all 600 songs worth) drip in the weighted content of heartbreak, heartache, rejection of peers and parents, professional wrestling, and homemade drugs and alcohol. John Darnielle’s craft is razor-sharp and so specifically detailed that he’ll make you feel all the feels. This isn’t topical writing. These songs aren’t POP! The discography sounds like a confession and the listener will find themselves as the lead character in some of the songs. (Not all, but some. Thankfully, not all.)

Goths is no exception. This album was recorded (proudly) with no computer-tweaked vocals. No pitch correction. No guitars (they may sound like guitars, but they ain’t). The term “goth” can conjure up images – black trench coats, shiny belt buckles with silver goat heads, lace ascots, and the earring thing that connects the ear to the nose. This album finds a nostalgic warmth in those generalization, and the woods, organs, and ambient noise are a soft place for the songs’ lyrics to land. The album is deliberate, and to me the term “confessional” pops into mind once again. Goths plays like excerpts from a teenager’s journal, and we are given a glimpse of that life for 55 minutes. “We Do it Different on the West Coast” has a bouncy bass  that grooves along with the background vocals of the “oohhs” and “aahhs” and tells a story of a youngster’s pride for the city he lives in, reaffirming the fact that others just don’t get “it.”  Don’t let the track titles lead you astray. “Stench of the Unburied” is one of the most pleasant tracks (honestly), describing a joy ride with friends, listening to Siouxsie & the Banchees on KROQ and getting in trouble with The Law. This song has the greatest chorus of the whole album, and keeps the enjoyment of the joyride wrapped up like a baby in a warm blanket, or an angsty teen wearing crushed purple velvet.

“Wear Black” takes the listener through the mind of the goth youth, who has trouble fitting in, but knows he/she is still the fly-est lookin’, all the time.

“Rage of Travers” puts you in the black patent-leather boots of a singer who gets bumped from the bill and carries on with his night. The line “Nobody wants to hear the 12 bar blues, from a guy in platform shoes” is so pure and sincere, I’m surprised it has never been sung before. Goths gives us a taste of a culture we may have missed—and if we did miss it, worry not, those who were there didn’t miss us.

The fourth side of Goths starts with a subtle ballad, “Shelved”, which tells the story of a singer who won’t sell out musically. As the song unravels, it slowly but smoothly develops into a Cure-like rager of shoegazing and swaying-in-place, fueled by its own angst.

The band  has had so many articles written on them, it’s difficult to find anything new to say about them. Every album is detailed with an ultra-descriptive glimpse into real characters, as though John Steinbeck wanted to start a band and take his show on the road. The Mountain Goats are a treasure, and this album is the blood-red ruby at the center of the crown.

The deluxe vinyl edition (colored in vampire-blood red – of course) is accompanied by a third record consisting of 4 beautifully ambient instrumentals which will keep the goths playing music until dawn. Don’t let Goths go sulking into the night. This creature shouldn’t go back in its hole.  It’s another time capsule by a most prolific band, and well worth the listen.

Favorite Side:

Side B

4. “We Do it Different on the West Coast”
5. “Unicorn Tolerance”
6. “Stench of the Unburied”

… a couple days ago. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, and the world has been changed ever since. Certainly MY world is entirely different.

It wasn’t only Sgt. Pepper, but that was the moment: June of ’67. The Monterey International Pop Festival followed later that month, as well as the BBC-originated Our World, seen by around 400 to 700 million people (almost a quarter of the population of the planet at the time) — on which the Fabs appeared as the representatives of England and the United Kingdom, performing “All You Need is Love” (written for the broadcast).

If you’re old enough to have been there, you remember. If not, you’ve probably heard. It’s hard now to appreciate the presence and the power that the Beatles had back then. Just look at Our World: as I said — it was the very first world-wide telecast, with countries all over the planet participating.

I’ve written before that this is the record that turned me into a musician. After a brief romance with the idea of being a scientist when I grew up (a passion that never quite left), art took over, and visual art was where I was headed[1]. And then Sgt. Pepper, and “Within You Without You”, and I started paying much more attention to music. Much more.

So much has been written about the album, then, now and in the years in between. The 50^th Anniversary issue of it has gotten many, many reviews, and not all of them positive. But I want to direct your attention to Mikal Gilmore’s piece about the record.

To be honest, Mikal’s excitement got me all revved-up to hear it. When I did, I was a bit disappointed. But I think that sort of excitement is meant to be communicated to people with a conventional system — a theory I’ll test out this week. For years the last twenty years, I’ve listened (on my comparatively big-ass system) to a one-off CD-R made from a 1/4” copy of the stereo master. That’s pretty close to the source. I have a UHQR of it, for when I want a slightly different flavor, and I also have an original mono LP.  Yes, the mono has more sheer drive, but the original stereo has all the strange non-pan-potted qualities of early stereo — with instruments popping up in weird places. (I’ve even got multi-tracks of some of the tunes — yes, I’m obsessed, like many people I know.)

After 50 years of this being my favorite record, though, I get much more caught up in the outtakes, most of which are released here officially for the first time[2]. The “Penny Lane” takes are especially interesting to me, but that’s only because I’ve heard the “Strawberry Fields Forever” takes for a long time. And when you hear how the title track comes together, the raw tracks — yes, the Fabs were certainly a good little band.

Pepper remains distinct among the band’s recorded output for the inventiveness of the recording, the arrangements and choices in instruments. When you hear the tracks broken down as on the super-deluxe box set, catching them as newly-released from the burdens of touring, you can hear them, for the first time, stretching out to give their work the quality of symphonic miniatures.

By a couple albums down (or one year, in Fabs terms), Lennon would regard it all as “shite” and we saw that they’d strip it back down. But for the moment, a Technicolor, panoramic, psychedelic dream was real.

And many of us responded.

[1] In 1983, a director whose film I was scoring was staying over night at my mother’s house in NJ, and her sister called to tell him he should encourage me to go back to visual art, that that was where my real talent was.

[2] The majority of what there is to be heard have been “available” as bootlegs for years.

Even if you want and can afford a dedicated room, there’s something to consider if you don’t live alone…

Going into your own dedicated room to listen to music is a fabulous experience. In addition to your system/room’s execution being considered on a deeper level, the sheer lack of distractions will improve your experience.

However, the good news can also be the bad news. The largest issue isn’t about any of those types of audio-related things. It’s about relationships.

I remember reminding my wife how great it was that, instead of being out at night, I was always home in my music room. I felt as if I had to mention it, because frankly, I knew something was wrong.

Here’s what I learned, and what I learned about some other folks who had dedicated rooms (with doors that could be closed). I learned that being home, but being relatively unavailable to the family members, almost may have been worse than if I had been out in a bar somewhere.

So if you already have a dedicated room, or if you plan to have one, I suggest that you include your family members in the use of it from time to time. Failing that option, make sure that you provide sufficient time outside of the room in order to let your family know that you have your priorities in order.

Remember that a great music system, properly sorted out, should be a wonderful attitude adjuster. Just make sure you aren’t causing bad attitudes to develop elsewhere while you’re sequestered in your dedicated room!

I know whereof I speak, having committed that sin. Fortunately my wife is a saint and we worked it out. We celebrated our forty-eighth anniversary a few months ago!

Need to create a wider listening area?

When a wider listening area is desired, a trick the British introduced years ago may be useful. It’s called Intensity Stereophony (a big name for such a simple idea).

Basically, the idea is to crossfire the speakers in front of your seat, as opposed to a “normal installation,” where you might normally aim them at your seat or toe them in behind you. In other words, if you expected to have the speakers crossfire two feet behind your head, in this case, it might be two feet in front. This results in a left side listener hearing increasingly more of the right speaker’s direct radiation and less of the left speaker’s.

The practical effect is that images tend to be a bit more stationary for off-axis listeners (for example, the family members mentioned above). In general this technique works most effectively when the loudspeakers’ off-axis response is smoother than average. Additionally, you may need to introduce more loudspeaker separation, to avoid the image “bunching up in the center.”

The phantom center image is simply wider and more forgiving for off-center listeners. Finally, it must be noted that planar loudspeakers get progressively less loud as you get closer to them, so sometimes they will help to provide a larger listening area. However, there is no free lunch – the center location is the only one that can provide true fidelity with stereophony.

Do remember that sitting off-center still exhibits the same time/phase frequency response roughness that we discussed in Copper Issue #31 – Why you should be sour on a “wide sweet spot” for serious listening with two-channel playback.

If you have a dedicated room, sometimes it’s useful to mark the best loudspeaker location for “serious listening”, as well as the one to be used for hosting more listeners.

Could your chair or sofa be damaging your music reproduction?

You may not have this problem, but you might know someone who does! As the guy who wrote the owner’s manual for the ARC/MagnepanTympani 1Ds, I thought I pretty much knew it all when it came to installing these speakers and getting the most from them in any room.

That’s why I’ll never forget the humbling lesson I learned in my lofty role as an audio “guru.” Here’s what happened:

As a high-end dealer in the early ’80s, I had sold a pair of Magneplanar Tympani 1D loudspeakers for use in an Audio Research system. I went out to install the system (which I always insisted on—and your dealer should do it for you as well).

I always carried along a 1/3-octave real time analyzer so that I could quickly see where the bass standing wave problems were located in the listening area of the room.

In less than an hour, I had found the best place for the listening seat, as well as generally locating the speaker positions (always a bit tricky due to the negative bass wave emanating from the rear of the speaker).

Using my basic 3-step installation technique as decribed in Get Better Sound Tips #74–77, plus the information outlined in Tips #78–89, I worked to get the sound to where I’d be proud to send a prospect over to my client’s house to hear what the Maggies sounded like in a home.

When I left some time later, my client was effusively thanking me for getting him better sound than he thought was possible. I was a hero.

A week later, he called me to complain about a “thickness in the mid-bass.” I don’t know if you are old enough to remember the Tympani 1Ds, but bass definition and timbre were their best qualities (Harry Pearson, writing in The Absolute Sound, adopted the T-1D as the bass unit for his soon-to-become famous hybrid Infinity QRS/Tympani 1D system).

There was NO WAY we could have a thickness in the bass! My client must have changed some component or something…

I finally stopped by later that day, expecting to point out the offending component. But nothing was changed in the system. And boy, was the upper bass thick! I got out my trusty RTA.

Sure enough, there was at least a 6 dB peak at about 125 Hz! Where did this come from? I couldn’t figure it out, but as I moved the RTA about two or three feet in front of the listening position I’d selected (and even marked!), the bass peak gradually disappeared.

So we moved the seat forward and, just to be sure, listened to hear what the guru (me) had fixed. Oh, no, the peak was back!  Did I measure incorrectly?

I measured the response behind the listening seat in the area where we had originally determined was the best seat in the house (literally). Now the peak was reduced a bit, but not removed entirely! How could that be possible? By then, I was looking so foolish that I couldn’t help but be embarrassed.

Then I noticed it. My client had a new sofa. When I had set the system up, we had used an occasional chair for the listening/voicing sessions.

His new sofa had a tightly stretched back panel (leather/leatherette). It was stretched so tightly, it produced its own tympanic sympathetic resonances at 125 Hz. Removing the sofa solved the mystery.  We ultimately damped the back panel and were able to use it in his room.

So check out any system where the seating could cause a similar effect. I’m still surprised at how many systems can be affected.

These comments are edited & excerpted from Get Better Sound, and used with the author’s permission. 🙂
You can also read Jim’s work at his website, www.getbettersound.com .

And now for something completely different – a brief detour into an area which is not especially audio-related, but which I’m hoping you might find interesting.  Ever since 1989 I have managed to find myself responsible, at one time or another, and to one degree or another, for the patent portfolios of each of the companies I have worked for.  I am also an inventor on several issued patents, and have even been retained as an expert advisor on a patent-infringement lawsuit.  So I know a little bit about the subject – at least enough to have learned that most people have a seriously inadequate understanding of the purpose, nature, and value of patents.

Most people understand the basic concept of a patent.  If you invent something, by patenting it you will be able to prevent anybody else from taking advantage of it.  And while that simple summary is correct, it is misleadingly simple.  Patent law is an arcane and highly technical field, and making proper use of it requires great expertise.  So you really need to be professionally advised if you are thinking of patenting something yourself, or, worse, are concerned that you may be infringing on someone else’s patent.

What exactly is a patent?  Quite simply, a patent is a formal disclosure of an invention.  By virtue of publishing precisely what your invention is, a patent can be invoked to prevent others from using it without your consent.  Clearly it is a powerful concept.  But because it has significant and substantial legal and financial ramifications, a tortuous framework of patent law has grown up around it to enable inventors and patent holders to enforce their legal rights in a fair and consistent manner.  These legal strictures are very important.  Weaknesses in any of these areas can result in a patent application being rejected, or its applicability restricted – or even outright invalidated – at some point in the future.

First of all, it is important to understand what can be patented and what can’t.  A patent must describe either a specific thing, or a specific method of making a thing.  The inventor must fully and completely disclose exactly what constitutes the invention, and provide clear criteria that permit the reader to distinguish the invention from something which is not covered by the patent, leaving as little as possible in the way of ambiguity.  Ambiguity can end up being a fatal flaw.  You cannot obtain patent protection for something that you are not prepared to publicly disclose.

Next, there must be an ‘inventive step’ – a critical point at which the invention makes a notable advance beyond what was previously known (what patent law refers to as ‘prior art’).  Your patent must contain ‘full disclosure’.  The key test that will be applied is that it must contain everything that ‘a person skilled in the art’ would need to know to be able to successfully replicate the invention.  The inventor must not withhold some key “secret sauce” from the patent disclosure.   Nor can it rely on something that the inventors are not able to fully disclose (for example, that hasn’t yet been invented or discovered).

The patent should disclose who invented the invention.  There can be multiple inventors, and if so, each listed inventor must be able to point to a critical aspect of the ‘inventive step’ for which they are responsible, and all of the actual inventors must be included in the patent.  Just being the owner of the company for whom the inventor works does not entitle you to be listed as an inventor.  It is not unusual for all rights in the patent to be assigned to a third party, usually the employer of the inventor(s), although the inventors’ explicit consent is required for this to happen.

Finally, the substance of the invention cannot become public knowledge prior to the filing of the patent application.  If it does so, it will itself be considered to be part of the ‘prior art’ and therefore not patentable!  Something as innocuous as offering a product containing the invention for sale – even if no sales actually occurred – may be construed as placing the substance of the invention ‘in the public domain’.  Some key aspects of patent law deal with the public disclosure of material subject to a patent application, as there are various exemptions and grace periods which may apply.

The structure of a patent comprises two parts, the Specification and the Claims.  The Claims are the most important section of the patent.  Patent law protects only what is claimed in the Claims.  The Claims set forth in a highly formalized manner exactly what the inventor(s) are seeking to protect.  The wording of patent Claims always appears dry and arcane to a casual reader, because the legal language used has evolved to meet a specific purpose.  Because of this, improperly written Claims – even if they might appear to make sense to a casual reader – can actually render an otherwise valuable patent practically worthless.  But even when read by an expert, any Claim read in isolation will have room for uncertainty about what is actually being described.  Therefore, patents also include a Specification section in which the invention is described in detail, placed in the context of the pre-existing state-of-the-art, and illuminated with examples of specific embodiments of the invention.  The Claims are therefore intended to be read and interpreted – and any ambiguities resolved – in the light of the Specifications.

It is important that the Claims of a patent describe only the new inventions for which the inventor is seeking protection.  If a Claim is found to describe ‘prior art’, then that claim – and in some circumstances the entire patent – will be held to be invalid.  This will be the case regardless of whether or not the inventor was aware of it.  Usually the Specification will discuss the ‘prior art’ in some detail, and explain why and how the inventor’s claims are distinct and different, and this is an important aspect of a well-written patent.

Once you have written your patent, it must be submitted to the patent office for approval.  The patent office will assign it to a patent examiner who will make a cursory, but intelligent, examination of your patent and will attempt to establish whether or not the submitted document meets all of the requirements to be granted as a patent.  She may question whether the disclosure is complete.  Or she may raise specific objections based on existing patents or other publications which she considers may describe prior art.  You will then have the opportunity to address those objections and either re-submit the application or provide clarifying information to the examiner.  This can go back and forth many times, and the details of any such dialog will be retained in the patent’s history file, and may be referred to in future if the patent is ever challenged in court.  If all goes well, in due course a patent is issued; a patent only comes into force after it has been issued.

We’re still not done yet.  You have yet to decide where, geographically, you want your patent to have force.  If you have a US patent for example, your competitors in Germany, Japan, China, etc., can freely and legally enjoy full use of your patented inventions.  Your only remedy may be to stop that entity from importing infringing products into the US.  If you want the protection of your patent to extend to other countries of the world, then you have to file for patent protection in those countries too.  But be aware that your patent rights, the degree of protection offered, and the remedies available against infringement, may be different in each country.  Filing internationally gets to be very expensive, since your patent will usually require to be translated into each country’s native language, and rendered fully in compliance with each country’s patent codes.  Also, you cannot sit on your hands and see how things work out before deciding whether to file internationally.  You have to make that decision up front (within a maximum of 12 months, if you manage to line all your ducks up correctly).

Once issued, the patent has a severely restricted lifetime.  In the US this is 20 years from the date when the patent was first filed with the patent office, regardless of how long it may have spent going back and forth with the examiner’s office prior to issuance.  Once the patent expires, it no longer conveys any protection whatsoever, and anybody is free to make full use of it.  There are no ways to get around that.

It is one of the big mistakes that people make in regard to patents that they over-estimate the value of an issued patent.  All issuance demonstrates is that the examiner has been persuaded that the inventor has met the requirements for a valid patent.  It does NOT guarantee that the patent actually does meet those requirements!  This can – and regularly does – come as a big surprise to someone who has shelled out a lot of money to get to that point.

So what use is a patent then?  In reality, if you are the owner of a valid, issued patent, it gives you a legal basis on which to approach a third party who may be infringing that patent against your wishes and ask them to either stop doing so or purchase a license.  Generally, what happens next depends on whether the third party is bigger than you, and has greater financial clout.  If the party continues to ignore your entreaties, you will have the right to sue them for patent infringement.  But that is a very scary step to take.

A court of law is the only place where the ultimate blessing of validity can be bestowed upon a patent.  This is where you end up if you sue somebody – or if somebody sues you – for patent infringement.  A court of law will do what the patent examiner did not.  It will examine the patent in minute detail and pronounce with finality on whether or not the patent is valid.  It can choose to limit the patent’s validity, or even invalidate it entirely.  But a patent whose claims have been upheld in court can no longer be legally challenged as to validity.  The owner of a patent whose claims have been upheld (or even declared invalid, for that matter) in a court of law will also be $1M – and often more – lighter in the wallet.  Yes, that was an ‘M’.  A patent infringement lawsuit is not for the faint of heart – on either side.

On the other hand, in the US, the doctrine of triple damages applies.  This means that if you infringe on the patent rights of a third party, in full awareness of those rights, then you will be liable for not only the damages you are held to have caused, but triple the damages.  The fear of incurring triple damages ensures that even large and powerful entities will take a patent infringement lawsuit seriously, because triple damages presents even a penurious client with an opportunity to seek serious legal representation on a contingency basis.

So what does all this cost?  First of all, you will benefit from the services of a good patent attorney.  Yes, they can charge $400 an hour, but there are good reasons for that.  I wouldn’t dream of filing a serious patent without the assistance of top quality specialist counsel, and indeed I never have.  There are so many ifs and buts when it comes to costs, but I will give you two pegs in the ground that I think are fair.  To get to the point where you have a high-quality issued US patent will cost you $10k to $20k.  If your ambitions are international, a fully issued patent portfolio in a basket of countries in which a technology-oriented company might wish to do business will set you back $150k to $250k per patent.  That’s not chump change.  And on top of that there are annual ‘maintenance fees’ to be paid.  Remember, this is to arm yourself with a single issued patent, which may be willfully ignored by someone who doesn’t think you have the balls to sue them, and which may ultimately be shown to be invalid – whether in court, or in one of those “oh dear” moments when you open a letter containing a sheaf of technical documents that you wish had come to your attention before committing to the time and expense of filing the patent in the first place!

At this point, a quick detour into good business practice.  Because of the doctrine of triple damages, companies and individuals should always make it strict policy that nobody (but NOBODY, other than in-house counsel) should ever read the Claims of ANY patent of which they are not the author.  If such a policy is carefully implemented in practice, then it follows that neither employee nor employer can ever be aware of any infringement of any patent.  Such a policy, if diligently implemented, offers a degree of legal protection against being side-swiped with a triple-damages lawsuit.  Since only the Claims describe what is patented, even if you have read the Specifications section of a patent which you are accused of infringing, if you haven’t read the Claims you cannot know what has actually been patented.  This may sound devious – let’s be honest here, it IS devious – but if you retain a serious patent attorney this is the first lesson that he will hammer into you.

Patents exist mostly as a ‘barrier to entry’, intended primarily to obstruct your competitors from entering your line of business.  In that sense they are comparable to the padlock you put on the factory’s front door when you go home for the weekend, or the insurance policies that you pay for once a year.  Like the padlock and the insurance, you need to understand what you are protecting yourself against, what the costs are of indulging yourself in that degree of protection, and what risks you run in not doing so.  There are exceptions to every rule, but for most small businesses – and I think all high-end audio businesses are small businesses – patents are very rarely a justifiable form of protection.  But patents can also be used to generate income through licensing fees.  For example, RCA made a fortune licensing their color TV patents.  And when telecom giant Nortel’s assets were sold off in 2011 following their bankruptcy, their patent portfolio was sold for $4.5B, in cash.  Yes, that was a ‘B’.

Labels don’t attach easily to the music of Andy Suzuki & The Method. You might call it pop leaning toward R&B, with some country-tinged folk music thrown in. Then again, New Yorker Suzuki is half Jewish and half Japanese, and his longtime bandmate, Kozza Babumba, is the grandson of Grammy-winning Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji. They’re a two-man melting pot, so why shouldn’t their music be a stew, too?

In trying to get a historical perspective on Suzuki’s output, I ran into a stumbling block. The internet age has had obvious effects on indie musicians. Countless streaming sites serve as free or low-cost platforms for spreading their work, often one track at a time. It’s striking, then, when artists choose to decrease rather than increase their web footprint. Suzuki has done this with his first full-length album, 300 Pianos from 2009, and the 2012 EP, The Ghost Stories.

Suzuki’s merchandise store, via the Bandwear.com platform, lists both CDs as in “final printing” with only a few copies remaining, and warns that they are “no longer available on iTunes or any streaming services.” (It’s fun to note something else on Suzuki’s Bandwear page: for a mere $250, you can purchase a personal Skype concert by the singer! The internet age can be as great for fans as it is for artists.)

So, what is Suzuki allowing to fade into obsolescence? Only the title track of 300 Pianos still exists on YouTube. While it’s a little rough in terms of ensemble, and maybe the phrase-endings in the lyrics could have a more natural cadence, there’s a lot to admire. Babumba provides an intriguing texture with hand percussion over the repeating piano chords. Former band member Jason Gorelick sweetens the sound with violin lines.

“300 Pianos” is a heartbreaking song about Suzuki’s father, who was ill with Alzheimer’s at the time. (He died in 2011.) In the lyrics, you can hear the singer’s pain and frustration at the ruthless disease: “And I know that every chord I’ve used before / And every broken metaphor / Can’t bring me closer to the man behind the door.”

The melodic style is accessible but not saccharine and would serve Suzuki well if he ever decides to write a musical. The art of expressing raw emotion without melodrama is rare indeed.

Another trace of Suzuki’s out-of-print work is “Take Care of Me,” a track from the 2012 EP The Ghost Stories. This shows a different aspect of the songwriter, one much more likely to turn into a payday but far less interesting. It’s an R&B-glazed pop love song worthy of a boy band. Shape your fingers into a heart and wink at the girls:

So, if 300 Pianos was the bare-bones truth and The Ghost Stories was the slick veneer, what does that leave? Fortunately, the rest of Suzuki’s work is easy to find.

The 2013 full-length album Born Out of Mischief, funded with $47,000 raised on Indiegogo, is still available in every format. Its release got enough attention and praise that it landed the band a gig opening for Ringo Starr, among others. What it reveals is more ingredients in the musical stew. “Virginia” owes its sound to modern country (Blake Shelton, Keith Urban). Suzuki proves himself a versatile singer with a big range that’s clear at the top and smoky at the bottom.

In “Keep Me Running,” Suzuki seems to have found a balance between love song and originality, no easy task in the pop world. Babumba’s angular patterns on the drum set drive at a frantic pace. The unusual rhythms in the lyrics reminded me of the recitational style of Tracy Chapman:

Without question, the gem of Born out of Mischief is the title song, another tribute to Suzuki’s upbringing, this time focused on appreciation of his mother. The accompaniment is based on simple strummed acoustic guitar, but any folk or country singer knows you can’t beat that as a canvas primed for emotional color. Again Gorelick’s violin contributes to the bittersweet effect.

In February 2017, Andy Suzuki & The Method released a new full-length album called The Glass Hour. Given that the tracks are mastered by Chris Gehringer, best known for his work with Rihanna and Lady Gaga, it’s not surprising to find a multi-textured production with a tendency toward brightened percussion sound.

But The Glass Hour shows another side of Suzuki and Babumba (Gorelick does not appear on the album), this time as socio-political voices. “Fight” is inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr., told from the point of view of someone who’s beaten down and baffled by mistreatment, but won’t go home. Gritty electric guitar and complex percussion support lyrics that will make you raise your fist in determination, contrasting with quieter sections:

Other stand-outs on The Glass Hour are “Runaway,” notable for Babumba’s military-style drum riffs, and the slow-beat R&B “Overtime,” which lets Suzuki show off some smooth upper register.

This latest album is a strong effort likely to launch Suzuki and Babumba into a new level professionally. But who can tell what that new level will be? The beauty of being indie, whether it’s in songwriting or any other artistic field, is the freedom to do what you like at any point, and change what you do when it suits you. Andy Suzuki & The Method take advantage of that freedom, and it seems to be working well for them.

What was that movie— where if you fell asleep, you died?

Getting home after a long flight is similar: if you return during daylight hours, you CANNOT go to sleep, or your sleep schedule will be screwed up for the rest of your life. Or something like that.

That was my situation upon my return from Munich— trying to stay awake until my usual bedtime, despite having been up for 40 hours or so, with my tinnitus having ratcheted up to a pulsing, swishing sound like a cheap dishwasher. And then as bedtime approached—hell, 8:30 is close enough!—I found that I was so wired that sleep seemed unlikely.

My faithful canine companions echoed my mood: Buster, the 80-pound mutt who is my spirit animal, grumbled unhappily. Grayson, the manic 16-pound schnauzer, twitched and spun around as though 100 squirrels were skittering past the sliding glass door.

What to do? Doth music hath charms to soothe the savage breast? Or at least an old grump and his dogs??

When my kids were babies,  Enya CDs would usually put them to sleep. I suspected that those discs would now do nothing but annoy me—assuming I could find them. For decades, Eno’s Music for Airports has worked for me, intermixed with a random Gymnopedie or two from Satie. Wonder how the dogs would react?

Well…you can see Buster snoozing atop the page. Grayson followed suit, and the three of us hit the hay shortly thereafter.

Back in the early ’80’s, a book called Super-Learning popularized the dictums of Dr. Georgi Lozanov, who theorized that learning and memory were both enhanced when baroque music was played during the teaching process.  It was a popular and pretty intuitive concept: baroque music generally has a tempo of around 60 beats per minute (bpm), similar to the heartbeat of a well-trained athlete (not me, in other words). The idea was that the autonomic nervous system would mimic the music’s tempo, producing a relaxation response which creates a time-stretching effect, enhancing mental absorption and retention.

Both fitness trainers and DJs consciously increase or decrease  the bpm of the music used, in order to warm up the crowd, maximize frenzy, then wind them down. Again: intuitive. But is the response effect a physiological reality, or merely a projection? Can you dial heartbeats up and down with music?

Oddly enough, there’s no clear-cut answer. Google “music beats per minute physiology” and you’ll see dozens of articles, ranging from how-to advisories for DJs listing the bpm of popular songs (according to this article, most hit pop songs fall into the 120-130 bpm range) to serious studies tracking the body’s response to varied tempi during studying and during physical exertion. Just flipping through several such studies reveals a surprising divergence in clinical findings. Most studies like this one dispute or dispel the notion that the heartbeat reacts to match the tempo of music, but many agree that music of almost any tempo—whether it’s 40 bpm or 140—reduces blood pressure, especially the diastolic.

Huh. Personally, when I hear 140 bpm thrash metal, I don’t feel as though my blood pressure is getting lower—quite the contrary. I did notice that the subjects of the studies tend to be between 18 and 27; perhaps they’ve developmentally adapted to such stuff.

And for me and my dogs? I know that Satie produces slowed respiration in all of us, and an increased feeling of relaxation. I don’t continuously monitor my heart rate or blood pressure, so I can’t tell you what happens to those markers during Gymnopedies.

Call me a lousy scientist, but I don’t really care what the exact mechanism is: it helps me wind down.

And it does seem to soothe those savage, albeit tiny, breasts.

Winter makes a last-ditch effort to hold on.