Alaska as metaphor

Go ahead and follow the above picture, which is also a link, to the large-format version. Beautiful, isn’t it? The photo was taken a couple of miles from my home town, of a series of mountains across the Cook Inlet. On a clear day they stick out and beckon, dwarfing all surroundings. Seeing these mountains, it is no wonder that Liz Phair’s unreleased song from her Exile in Guyville recordings used Alaska as a metaphor for cold, vast wastelands. The song itself presents a cold, bleak landscape in its first half, featuring just Phair’s hoarse voice and lonely pluckings on her acoustic guitar. The second dabbles more in dispair, with Phair’s lyrics turning dark, and revealing the betrayal and loneliness she feels. Songs like this show that Phair’s reject songs from her first album hold more meaning and feeling than both her two more recent albums combined. A shame.

• Ant in Alaska – Liz Phair

 Cliché doesn’t have to be

Elliott Smith’s song “Needle in the Hay” takes the same rout as Phair’s: Smith singing hoarsely alone with acoustic accompaniment. It’s a pairing that works well to add emphasis to loneliness; although, as with the song’s title, has been used to the point of cliché. Smith showed his talent as a performer by transcending both clichés of this song, producing that is heartfelt and depressing (especially in light of his later suicide[?]). Where it takes the lack of accompaniment and the harsh qualities of Phair’s voice to fully develop the theme of her song, Smith is able to cut right to the chase and, without irony, use the cliché to full effect.

• Needle in the Hay – Elliott Smith (song in m4a format)

 Fleet Foxes done in the woods

First Aid Kit is a duet of two sisters from Sweden. This is a recording of theirs, done the morning after having seen Fleet Foxes in concert, in tribute to them. The Fleet Foxes’ recorded version of this song might be more haunting and lonely, and follows the theme so far of a single vocalist with a single acoustic guitar for accompaniment, but the image of these two young sisters singing their hearts out, isolated but together, about such a sad topic, is really moving. While the narrator’s love might be permanently lost, theirs is not, and with their smiles to each other come hope for him as well as the rest of us.

• Tiger Mountain Peasant Song – Fleet Foxes

In a blast from the past, I stumbled across this article on the hipster party that wasn’t.

“God, this is such a scene. I really just wanted to do something kinda intimate and chill,” said Crystal Perriman, a young waitress with a mohawk, pierced nostril, sleeveless Budweiser shirt, fannypack and Blue Blocker sunglasses.

“Seems like you can’t go anywhere anymore without a bunch of art kids showing up trying to look all cool,” she added, taking a drag of her Parliament then washing it down with a Sparks.

So funny. Thank god I’m not a hipster.