Anti-Climacus

See also: "Have a Cuppa Tea" by the Kinks.

I've been making mix cds again, now that I have a computer that will burn cds (the old computer stopped somewhere in 2009). The essence of the mix cd, when you are your own intended audience, is to juxtapose songs you know well in a way that at least seems new: the working subtitle of one of the mixes was "songs from albums I never listen to:" Wowee Zowie, I See a Darkness, In My Tribe, Meat is Murder.

"Have a Cuppa Tea" is from Muswell Hillbillies, a.k.a. the Kinks' "country album." Kinks albums take a long time to sink in: aside from Arthur, which has remained on my desert island discs since I first heard it in 2000, the gap between first hearing an album and coming to like and appreciate it is lengthy: Something Else took from 2001 or 2002 to 2009; Village Green Preservation Society bought (on cassette, from Meijer, for $2) in 1999 not until last year.

What holds the Kinks back, at least for me as a listener, is the formal mastery of their great albums. Of course all the songs are good: of course even the worst are catchy and well-constructed: of course the famous songs will all be excellent: of course there will be two or three random songs that are unexpectedly great. I came across this line of criticism first in reference to the A Tribe Called Quest album Midnight Marauders. The critic noted that, unlike their older albums, it had no weak tracks, and for that reason, failed to make any song stand out. Not unlike hour three of continuous viewing at the Louvre: one gets so inured by greatness that it ceases to amaze.

Removed from their context in an album, however, Kinks songs are able to stand out. Thus "Have a Cuppa Tea," chosen at random from its album, put somewhere towards the end of a mix, becomes a focal point of the mix because, well: how unassuming the intro, how quickly the lyrical conceit is established, how funny it becomes at unexpected moments, how quickly and seamlessly in transitions from music-hall to country and back again. And how the piano is basically completely inappropriate for the song but works anyway.

*****

I was introduced to the Libertines by a German friend in the fall of 2004, who brought along a copy of The Libertines as we drove to pick out Halloween costumes. She said to me: "I can't believe you've never heard them." I couldn't really believe it either. The Libertines aesthetic is English punk in the tradition of the Kinks, the Jam, and Manic Street Preachers: omnidirectional anger (often misinterpreted by conservatives as essentially right-of-center in nature; it'd be more correct to say they were all contrarian) and a celebration of their Englishness.

"The Boys in the Band" is from their first album, Up the Bracket. It's of interest to me as a great song that cannot quite overcome the circumstances of its own construction. Which is to say, it sounds like the verse and chorus were stitched together from two different songs. The verses are fast, punky, and contain that great bass line that leads back into each line. The choruses are slower, emphasize the vocal harmonies, and have a distinctively English music-hall feel. By the time of The Libertines, they had figured out how to shade each into the other, but the effect is greater at the cost of being less striking.