Cacophonous Vibes by Harmony |
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David Linden
9.30 pm, lounge room, Collendina
The V/Line train stumbles through the cold Friday night, past moody and fickle points and signals. I know each is ready to tantrum and I’m almost holding my breath lest I cause further delay.
I’m dying to get home. After another day/week/eternity at the office (or The Office), it’s time to return, back through the looking glass, to real life.
That’s where Jo, our dogs and cats and Harmony’s Cacophonous Vibes come in.
Harmony play loud, jarring rock, over Motownesque three-part harmonies. The lead singer sounds like Joe Cocker blaring lost soul classics into a concrete box. The harmonies sweeten the bare-bones guitar, bass and drums just enough.
And the way they play, the sound they make, you just know Harmony are the real deal.
In the lounge room, my workbag on the floor, Jo and I sway arm in arm. I’m holding a stubbie and Jo a glass of white – it’s Friday night after all. Cacophonous Vibes has got to the bit where the drummer starts bashing her crash cymbal just before the chorus.
It’s a great build-up – you can’t miss the feeling that there's something coming.
One of the dogs starts to howl as Jo and I sing along, drinks raised, ‘Whoa! Cacophonous vibes.’
We can’t really sing along after that because only a few of the words are understandable … until the chorus comes around again.
I’ve heard Tom Lyngcoln, Harmony’s lead singer/co-songwriter/guitarist, say that all their songs are dark, moaning laments. Often, maybe because I don’t feel like I’m being spun a line or manipulated, I find those laments really uplifting. I get a similar feeling from some songs by another great Australian band, The Drones.
A few minutes later and Cacophonous Vibes is over. Jo and I sit together on the couch, listening to the rest of the album and laughing at how silly we are and how good it feels.
One of the cats comes to nestle in my lap.
It’s really good to be home.
Postscript
Tom Lyngcoln speaks to Stereo Stories (via facebook), April 2013
It's still a foreign notion when people actually listen to something you've created. You get so caught up in its construction and completion that sometimes it feels like the only other time it exists is when you rehash it live in varying degrees of accuracy. In that environment it rarely raises an eyebrow these days. People used to dance to music a lot more freely but now it's an activity that suggests mental instability or inebriation and is largely inconvenient to those in your immediate vicinity.
It's easy to forget that something you've committed to tape goes on living in people's homes and cars as they traverse weekly rituals. It's something I wish I thought about more when completing a recording because maybe that's the most important moment for music now – when it is brought to life away from pubs and festivals and consumerism and forms a structural part of the home.
So rarely is music talked about in the way Dave has done here. Most opinions on music are based upon clinical categorisations and associative signposts to uphold the authors reputation. Seldom do you hear how the listener is actually engaging with it and that's why this piece above is incredibly rewarding for a musician to read.
I don't know why it would be a surprise though, as the scene above is very familiar to me and identical to what occurs in my own home. We just don't all commit it to words. Maybe we should. Because I find it inspiring that someone is listening to one of our songs voluntarily.
Played live, people stand in front a group of musicians and look at them operating equipment. They can leave the room or stand in front of the band. The choices are simple but they have little control over what they will hear. Same goes for radio. You turn it on and are captive to someone else's programming. At home it becomes deeply personal, dependant completely on the individual.
Sometimes it takes me 15 minutes or more to choose something, smoke drifting from the pan, dog increasingly losing its mind to hunger, tap dancing like a child in a beauty pageant, boiled water gone cold, open fridge chiming like a heart monitor, neck craned sideways looking at spines ... before inevitably pulling out the same songs that you will embark on a three week bender with, wringing every available chill from until it is spent ... Look Back by the Stevens, or Lord Knows Best by Dirty Beaches or Clean Break by Deep Heat or Reverting To Type by Spinning Rooms or Hold On by Odetta or any of those other anomalies that implant in your skull and keep time to life.
Cacophonous Vibes feels like one of the better songs I have written over the years and whilst negatively geared, it makes me happy that it still has a positive purpose after I am done with it. I get so selfish about music that i forget that other people will hear it too … hopefully.
More on Harmony
Harmony on Facebook.
Hear their latest at Harmony's Bandcamp.
9.30 pm, lounge room, Collendina
The V/Line train stumbles through the cold Friday night, past moody and fickle points and signals. I know each is ready to tantrum and I’m almost holding my breath lest I cause further delay.
I’m dying to get home. After another day/week/eternity at the office (or The Office), it’s time to return, back through the looking glass, to real life.
That’s where Jo, our dogs and cats and Harmony’s Cacophonous Vibes come in.
Harmony play loud, jarring rock, over Motownesque three-part harmonies. The lead singer sounds like Joe Cocker blaring lost soul classics into a concrete box. The harmonies sweeten the bare-bones guitar, bass and drums just enough.
And the way they play, the sound they make, you just know Harmony are the real deal.
In the lounge room, my workbag on the floor, Jo and I sway arm in arm. I’m holding a stubbie and Jo a glass of white – it’s Friday night after all. Cacophonous Vibes has got to the bit where the drummer starts bashing her crash cymbal just before the chorus.
It’s a great build-up – you can’t miss the feeling that there's something coming.
One of the dogs starts to howl as Jo and I sing along, drinks raised, ‘Whoa! Cacophonous vibes.’
We can’t really sing along after that because only a few of the words are understandable … until the chorus comes around again.
I’ve heard Tom Lyngcoln, Harmony’s lead singer/co-songwriter/guitarist, say that all their songs are dark, moaning laments. Often, maybe because I don’t feel like I’m being spun a line or manipulated, I find those laments really uplifting. I get a similar feeling from some songs by another great Australian band, The Drones.
A few minutes later and Cacophonous Vibes is over. Jo and I sit together on the couch, listening to the rest of the album and laughing at how silly we are and how good it feels.
One of the cats comes to nestle in my lap.
It’s really good to be home.
Postscript
Tom Lyngcoln speaks to Stereo Stories (via facebook), April 2013
It's still a foreign notion when people actually listen to something you've created. You get so caught up in its construction and completion that sometimes it feels like the only other time it exists is when you rehash it live in varying degrees of accuracy. In that environment it rarely raises an eyebrow these days. People used to dance to music a lot more freely but now it's an activity that suggests mental instability or inebriation and is largely inconvenient to those in your immediate vicinity.
It's easy to forget that something you've committed to tape goes on living in people's homes and cars as they traverse weekly rituals. It's something I wish I thought about more when completing a recording because maybe that's the most important moment for music now – when it is brought to life away from pubs and festivals and consumerism and forms a structural part of the home.
So rarely is music talked about in the way Dave has done here. Most opinions on music are based upon clinical categorisations and associative signposts to uphold the authors reputation. Seldom do you hear how the listener is actually engaging with it and that's why this piece above is incredibly rewarding for a musician to read.
I don't know why it would be a surprise though, as the scene above is very familiar to me and identical to what occurs in my own home. We just don't all commit it to words. Maybe we should. Because I find it inspiring that someone is listening to one of our songs voluntarily.
Played live, people stand in front a group of musicians and look at them operating equipment. They can leave the room or stand in front of the band. The choices are simple but they have little control over what they will hear. Same goes for radio. You turn it on and are captive to someone else's programming. At home it becomes deeply personal, dependant completely on the individual.
Sometimes it takes me 15 minutes or more to choose something, smoke drifting from the pan, dog increasingly losing its mind to hunger, tap dancing like a child in a beauty pageant, boiled water gone cold, open fridge chiming like a heart monitor, neck craned sideways looking at spines ... before inevitably pulling out the same songs that you will embark on a three week bender with, wringing every available chill from until it is spent ... Look Back by the Stevens, or Lord Knows Best by Dirty Beaches or Clean Break by Deep Heat or Reverting To Type by Spinning Rooms or Hold On by Odetta or any of those other anomalies that implant in your skull and keep time to life.
Cacophonous Vibes feels like one of the better songs I have written over the years and whilst negatively geared, it makes me happy that it still has a positive purpose after I am done with it. I get so selfish about music that i forget that other people will hear it too … hopefully.
More on Harmony
Harmony on Facebook.
Hear their latest at Harmony's Bandcamp.