Top Tracks of 2008, Part Three
4. Mia Doi Todd – River Of Life / The Yes Song – (2008) Gea
In the last few years, I’ve become enamored with “boring” music. When I started DJing at my college radio station, I was exposed to music that would consist of little more than a few chords and drag on for upwards of 20 minutes. I couldn’t listen to it. I thought it was boring. I thought it was lazy songwriting.
Then I found Iron & Wine. Many of his earlier songs are the same four chords and vocal line. What caught me first were his lyrics, part poetry, part storytelling, part screenplay (Sam Beam, the man behind the name, was a film school professor before given a record deal). I came to see his minimalist songwriting as a vessel to communicate the ideas and images evoked by his lyrics, and not so much because he was too lazy to write more exciting musical parts.
But the longer I listened to his music, the more I found myself getting immersed, and then lost in it, like Bastian in The Neverending Story. When I paid diligent attention to the chords as they repeated, and stopped wishing for different chords to appear, I almost entered into a trance state that completely changed my whole experience of the music. As a musician, I found it very similar to being “in the zone” on stage, when details like chord changes and invisible lines between verse and chorus evaporate and the music ceases to be a scriped series of parts, every band member playing together as a single person.
Such was my experience with this Mia Doi Todd track. The steady drones of the harmonium, conga, and guitar make me feel like I’ve walked in on a pagan ceremony in a forest clearing. Winding down after a stressful day was always easy with this album.
[audio=http://simpleharmonicmotion.net/htc/20090114/mp3/top2008-03.mp3,Mia Doi Todd -- River of Life / The Yes Song]
Dayv rocks an open mic at a local coffee shop every Saturday. He also co-produces a podcast of mixes at http://simpleharmonicmotion.net