I Triangulate Myself With Popular Music

I've mentioned before that I know nothing about music. Instead of constantly listening to new music like Speedrail does, I become fascinated by a very few bands that I never stop listening to. To me, it feels like these bands - They Might Be Giants, Parliament and Sufjan Stevens - grew up in the world that only I'm from. Sufjan is like my mind, Parliament is my heart and TMBG is my soul. Whatever it is that these three groups have in common, that's who I am.


They Might Be Giants
The first album I ever heard (aside from the four albums my mom listened to when I was growing up) was Flood by They Might Be Giants.

Shannon Garrity described TMBG lyrics as "catchy yet enigmatic" (Modern Tales subscription required, or take my word for it). TMBG is very funny, but it's a funny kind of funny.

They sing songs about a wide variety of topics - one personal favorite is the biopic "James K. Polk" - they love an odd little narrative, and always seem to be describing something very precisely, although it's often difficult to say what.

Sometimes I don't listen to TMBG for months at a time because my favorite songs are so much a part of me that I don't have to listen to them. TMBG is my childhood, and it's the child that's still a lot of who I am.


Parliament
Normally you couldn't say "Parliament" without saying "Parliament/Funkadelic" or "P-Funk," since the two bands are closely intertwined, but the albums I'm talking about; Fukentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome, Mothership Connection and The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein; all say Parliament on the cover, so I'm sticking with that.

Like TMBG, Parliament and especially their leader, George Clinton, seem to have a personal world that they understand completely but no one could ever adequately explain to anyone else. In Parliament's case, this is a mythology involving aliens (afro-nauts) from a universe of funk who hid the secret of the universe below the pyramids and, meh, it goes on from there.

I love funk. I have said before that I think it is the highest form of art, and I'll stand by that. I even went so far as to work for a funk musician's company for a year. Funk and Parliament especially tap in to whatever it is that brings me joy.


Sufjan Stevens
I liked Sufjan Stevens and the Illinoisemakers until I saw him live at Bowery Ballroom here in New York, and then I loved them. That was the greatest concert of my life.

Sufjan's current project is to write an album for each of the 50 states (so far he's done Michigan and my favorite album, Illinois.) He reads a lot of material about each state, finds some stories or places that resonate with him, mushes all that up in his mind, and these songs are the result.

Unless you're a state local, there's no way to know from the songs what exactly the material is about, and, as a result, what you end up feeling by listening to the album is that you understand the medium better than the material; you understand Sufjan himself.

If you read some of Sufjan's lyrics, you can see that this is an eloquent, intelligent guy with a sense of joy about the world. What I realized only once I saw Sufjan play live was how funny all of his music is.

Sufjan isn't ironic, nor is he overly sentimental (although Speedrail pointed out that on Illinoise, Sufjan talks about crying, like, eight times). Sufjan's songs are completely heart-felt, and he's still aware that what he's doing is hilarious. I could compare it to Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, but that's as close as I'm going to get.

[Edit: I just realized I went through an entire post about Sufjan Stevens without mentioning Katrina Kerns. So, yeah. Katrina Kerns.]