ONLY NOISE: Rise

Sometimes, these columns are damn hard to spit out. It’s not always easy to remain enthralled with the music world, especially when the real world seems to be crumbling around us. We don’t have to pretend. 2017 has been a fucking nightmare. We’ve witnessed the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, North Korea launching a missile over Japan, devastating floods in Houston and South Asia, and rallies filled with actual Nazis, just to name few lows.

I’m not a religious person, but I’m starting to expect widespread plague and a swarm of locusts any minute now. Just visiting The Guardian’s World News webpage fills me with terror – especially when the top headline reads: “Armageddon. Scientists calculate how stars can nudge comets to strike Earth.” What the fuck?! I’m a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, but you know what? Maybe there is someone up there, ready to just take us all out with a flaming space rock, because we clearly can’t keep things together down here.

“Um…what does this have to do with music?” you ask.

Here’s the thing: being a music journalist is pretty great. I love it more than any non-human in my life. However, when the world seems to be blazing in what Evangelicals would call “hellfire,” it’s hard to feel motivated to write about anything but serious shit. Rolling out a “think piece” on hidden messages in Taylor Swift’s new video feels like you’re stuffing your soul into a manila envelope and shipping it off to Satan for safekeeping. Even if you understand that it isn’t wrong to write about the VMAs, one still gets the sense that they are ignoring a towering elephant that is not only in the room, he’s bending the baseboards and demolishing furniture.

Of course, when I say “you” and “one,” I ultimately mean “me.” I cannot speak for other music writers. Though I can assume that many of my colleagues, who are intelligent, compassionate people, must feel some of this weight. It’s not possible that I’m the only person who suffers nauseating guilt reporting on Panorama Festival the same weekend journalists discover that North Korean missile tests have the capacity to reach New York.

So what does “one” do? Writing about art and pop culture in frightening times is a delicate matter. To say nothing of the floods, the violence, or the fear seems grossly irresponsible. To mention it only to alleviate one’s own guilt is possibly worse. I would never say making art in times of strife is a waste of time – I will always argue the opposite. I will even go so far as to say that it’s impossible to stall creativity in dire times, as conflict is one of art’s great muses. Critiquing art amidst global devastation, however, can be a task colored with shame. The question often clanging in my head being, “Does it even fucking matter?

I don’t know. I am unfit to answer the question. Here is what I do know. This is my job. My dream job, really. Artists and the music they make are kind of like my religion (or as close as this godless writer comes to it). Even on the worst of days, when my personal and family misfortunes could inspire an entire season of All My Children, I can still be brought to my knees by the beauty of a song. I know it’s corny. I also know that a song won’t drain the waters in Houston, or rewire the brains of white supremacists (if they have anything to rewire, that is). A song can’t do much when it all comes down to it, let alone a writer writing about a song – but artists can.

While I’ve been distraught by this year’s cruel newsreel, the artists who have leveraged their platforms for good causes have given me some sense of pride in humanity. 2017’s first cry from outspoken celebrities occurred at the Women’s March on Washington (and its sister marches around the world), where the likes of Madonna, Alicia Keys, The Indigo Girls, and Janelle Monáe either performed or gave impassioned speeches denouncing Trump’s election. That same month, Canadian electro-pop group Austra released their third LP Future Politics. The album is revelatory and filled with political insight, proving that pop music doesn’t have to be sugarcoated.

In 2017 there have been countless benefit concerts for organizations like Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and CAIR-New York (Counsel On American-Islamic Relations), to name but a few. Now the charitable hands of artists will extend to Houston. Solange has planned a benefit show later this month in Boston where 100% of proceeds will go to victims of Hurricane Harvey and its destructive floods. Fall Out Boy and rapper Bun B have planned separate but similar benefit shows, and numerous celebrities have either already given money to relief organizations (like $500,000 from Miley Cyrus and the $25,000 DJ Khaled shelled out) or promised to do so in the near future (like Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, Demi Lovato, and DNCE).

Many of the aforementioned performers are ones I don’t artistically care for that much, but these days I’m elated they’re around. It seems that with their immense command of the public interest and disposable income, artists have taken on responsibilities that our government should have the answers and funds for. It’s a sad and beautiful truth. That these seemingly “frivolous” celebrities go above and beyond their job title in times of crisis is noble; that they even need to in the first place is appalling.

So coming back to that initial question: what does “one” do? Let’s practice some simple logic. Things are bad right now. Things are really bad; and yet, artists both famous and obscure continue to defy the idea that humans are selfish, no-good creatures. If “you” are a music writer – why not write about those artists and their honorable efforts? It’s the least, and sometimes the most “you” can do.

ONLY NOISE: Bringing It All Back Home

By the time you read this, I’ll be home. Not the home I’ve made for nearly a decade – not New York home. I’ll be “home” with a big “H.” The “home” Carole King sang of in “Home Again,” the home James Joyce fled but could never stop writing about, the home of countless poems and plays.

It’s not controversial to say that most songs are about love in some capacity, but I would wager that music about home – whether leaving or returning – makes up a hefty portion of the American songbook as well. Some say there’s no place like it, some say you can never go back to it, but everyone seems to have an opinion on the matter.

I recently conducted a small and unscientific social media survey attempting to crowdsource peoples’ favorite songs about home. This is something I frequently do for various reasons, including a desire for musical diversity, and plain ol’ laziness. But of all my little studies, I’ve never been met with so many responses as this one produced. Home is clearly a topic that hits, well, home.

But why? The participants in my study don’t have too much in common, so their suggestions were all over the sonic spectrum. The only consistent factor between the contributors is that each of them has left home; none of them currently reside in the place they grew up. That seems to be the defining aspect for music about home as well – the longing needs the leaving. How can you miss something, how can you return to something, unless you’ve left it to begin with? In fact, the only song I’ve found thus far about just staying at home is Dolly Parton’s “My Tennessee Mountain Home.” But only the angelic Ms. Parton could be wise enough to appreciate what she has in the moment – the rest of us must lose it first.

While I love and respect Dolly’s depiction of home, I sure as hell can’t relate to it. “Church on a Sunday” and “June bugs on a string” are foreign things to me, about as foreign as Tennessee itself. Bob Dylan’s 1961 “I Was Young When I Left Home” however, strikes quite a chord. “I was young when I left home,” Dylan cries. “And I been out a’ramblin’ ‘round/And I never wrote a letter to my home.” This early-career track captures a far more familiar feeling than Parton’s jovial country ballad. While Dolly evokes domestic satisfaction, Dylan unmasks guilt.

Guilt, along with a strong cocktail of superiority and shame, seem to be the base ingredients for songs about home. Dylan’s portrayal of guilt came in the form of negligence – the thought that while, and perhaps because you are off making a life for yourself, the people you left behind are suffering: “It was just the other day/I was drinkin’ on my pay/When I met an old friend I used to know,” Dylan continues. “He said your mother’s dead and gone/Your baby sister’s all gone wrong/And your daddy needs you home right away.”

The call home is something many of us will experience at some stage in our lives, and it is always a strange beckoning. Revisiting the point of origin you love or hate, or love and hate, is an exercise in ambivalence. We miss home, and we dread home. We want to pay our respects to the cities that birthed us, but we also want to look good for it like home is an old flame; we want to let it know we’re doing just fine without it. As Dylan sings, “Not a shirt on my back/Not a penny on my name/Well I can’t go home this a’way.” The thought of returning to our doorstep worse off than when we left it seems humiliating.

I was young when I left home, too, but “home” for me has always been a fragmented thing. Before I left for New York, I’d lived in nine different houses, and my parents have since moved into their tenth, then eleventh, abode (oddly enough, I sometimes think I moved to New York to settle down). When I “go home,” it isn’t technically going home. The remnants of my childhood belongings are in boxes, save for some clothing hung in the closet and records parked in my dad’s collection. I don’t really have a childhood home, but this is more of a blessing than you might realize. For instance, my childhood home will never burn down. I will never have to sell my childhood home, or squabble over its title with siblings. I will never watch it decay or become condemned – because it doesn’t exist. Home for me has never been a house – it has never been measured in shingles or siding, but in people and meals and songs. I remember when interviewing Bill Callahan last summer I asked what made him feel at home. “My wife,” he said. “My nylon string guitar if that’s all I got to hold on to. Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill.”

Similarly, my version of home resides more in my father’s jumbo 6-string guitar than any midcentury bungalow or wrap-around porch. My dad hasn’t owned a home since 1998, and his rentals have been numerous. Some were even pretty badass – one had a pool table and a hot tub, but while the billiard balls and Jacuzzi did not travel on, the instruments and 4,000 LPs always have. When moving, the turntable and albums were always the first things to be unpacked and set up properly.

Still, “home” encompasses a lot more than just the nuclear family and its hearth. It’s the surrounding town too, and for me that’s the tricky part. The dissonance of visiting a place you never quite belonged is best depicted in songs like Catch Prichard’s “You Can Never Go Home Again” and Blaze Foley’s “Clay Pigeons.” Songs like these remind us that home is a construct; it is a perfect merging of time and nostalgia that you can never physically return to. Foley was well aware of this fact when he sang, “I could build me a castle of memories/Just to have somewhere to go.” 

It’s a troubling thought, but maybe we’re so intrigued by the idea of returning home because we want to be rewarded for escaping it in the first place. Look at movies like Garden State and Columbus, or really, any flick about self-righteous, post-collegiate white people returning home to assert their superiority over the ‘townies’ they left behind. Music has a far more graceful relationship with home I reckon, but one can’t help but notice the conflict residing in cuts like “A Long Way From Home” by The Kinks. “I hope you find what you are looking for with your car and handmade overcoats,” Ray Davies snipes. “But your wealth will never make you stronger ’cause you’re still a long way from home.”

Perhaps it is the artists who fled home so quickly that spend the most time singing about it; those who are never home, who are in constant motion, are the ones continuously pondering stillness. Or maybe home is so appealing because the future is always so uncertain. To quote another Kinks song about home, “This Time Tomorrow”: “I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t want to see.”

ONLY NOISE: Leave The Party

Think about the last party you threw. Think about the beer bought and balloons inflated. Remember the quiche you labored over, only to realize no one wants to eat quiche at a party. Now consider the playlist you made. Don’t deny it – we all know you spent three lunch breaks compiling a shindig score entitled “Fiesta Mix.”

Now tell me – was your party (despite irrelevant quiche) a hit? Did “Fiesta Mix” incite a collective boogie? Did hips swing and booties shake, rattling the room with merriment? Well congratulations, my friend; you have accomplished something far beyond my abilities. You’re allowed to pick the music for the party.

“But, don’t you write about music…for a living?“ you ask.

I know. It doesn’t make any sense. You might assume that all these years of music fanaticism, self-dedicated mixtapes, and belabored op-eds would prime me for the simple task of DJing a party – and somehow, the opposite is true.

Proof of such failure lies in every birthday party I’ve thrown since 2012. Each year I, like you, spend hours crafting a party soundtrack featuring all of my favorite “happy” songs. As you can imagine, this is a fairly difficult task for someone whose self-described musical tastes are that of a 45-year-old divorced man. Nevertheless, I press on – crafting my little playlist for my little party with utmost care.

And yet each year like clockwork, usually smack in the middle of “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” by Ian Dury and The Blockheads, someone pulls the plug on my tunes. Someone (usually my roommate) decides that a grubby punk with polio shouting “Two fat persons, click, click, click/Hit me, hit me, hit me!” is not party-worthy. I beg to differ, but that does no good. Within minutes my entire playlist is cast aside like an empty PBR can, and the bump n’ buzz of Top 40 hits crashes my b-day bash. I’ve gotten used to it, as well as the badge of honor I’ve earned in recent years: World’s Worst Party DJ. If I only had a sash embroidered with the accolade.

Fine then. If I can’t play my music at my own birthday party, I might as well take my talents to other soirees – clearing them out with the most un-danceable sounds. Embrace your strengths, am I right? Sure it takes some skill and intuition to boost the party the mood with music – but what about killing the mood? Doesn’t that take a certain aptitude for emotional sensitivity, too?

If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em. Trying to break up a party? Want to ruin a perfectly good game of beer pong? Looking to cock block Steve? Here are some tracks that will ensure record-scratching fun-terruption.

“Rhesus Negative” by Blanck Mass

Nine minutes of unrelenting, furious noise. Employ when the new Justin Bieber hit has begun its rotation, and everyone is dancing in unison. The room should begin to vacate around minute 4:35, when Blanck Mass’s Benjamin John Power starts screaming like a demon.

The entire Colors album by Ken Nordine

Nothing could be less conducive to partying than this 1966 spoken word jazz album by the eccentric Ken Nordine. Each song is dedicated to a color, to the point that it is supposed to sound like the color. Favorite cuts include, “Olive,” “Mauve” and “Fuchsia,” the latter of which contains the line, “we don’t wanna lose ya, Fuchsia.” It will derail any and all sexiness.

“Between The Bars” by Elliott Smith

If angry and awkward approaches don’t work, go with depressing. Who better to aid your mope attack than Mr. Misery himself, Elliott Smith? It will definitely kill the party vibe, but at least that guy slouching alone in the corner will appreciate it.

“Dear God, I Hate Myself” by Xiu Xiu

Pro tip: project the band’s music video (which is three minutes of Angela Seo making herself vomit while Jamie Stewart eats a chocolate bar) onto a nearby wall. Party over.

“Imagining My Man” by Aldous Harding

What says “party” more than a woeful folk singer? Just about anything. Funnily enough, this track comes from Harding’s most recent record, which is entitled Party.

“Japanese Banana” by Alvin & The Chipmunks

Think of this one as a little party favor – something to stick with the fleeing guests. There’s a reason my friend refers to this cut as “mind herpes;” it will be remembered long after it has ruined the festivities.

Pretty much anything by Tom Waits.

I personally like “What’s He Building In There” or “God’s Away On Business,” but let’s face it – no one’s going to be happy with gravelly voiced, vaudeville-inspired rock and if anyone is, marry that person immediately.

“Waking The Witch” by Kate Bush

From the dark side of Hounds Of Love, this number features chopper-like percussion and male vocals that literally sound like Satan. It’s impossible to dance to and sure to terrify everyone.

Whale Songs (various whales)

Any whale will do.

“Leave the Party” by Happyness

If all of your subtle sonic hints to GET THE FUCK OUT are for naught, perhaps a bit of direct lyric-messaging will do the trick. Happyness’ drowsy pop number literally says, “Leave the party, head right home” in the chorus. If guests refuse to hear that, then maybe the words, “kill everyone at the party” will be more audible.

ONLY NOISE: Summer In The City

What does summer sound like? For those of you living in respectable locales, it may sound like the buzz of John Deer lawnmowers, or a nighttime orchestra of cicadas. Summer anywhere but New York might hum along to the tune of unfurling picnic blankets and jet skis zipping across lakes. But for New Yorkers, the hot season presents a whole new catalogue of sounds – and smells – to take in.

Summer in New York is unlike summer anywhere else. Where July in, say, Bethesda, Maryland brings the whizzing of Frisbees on crisp air, NYC’s July sounds like asthmatics wheezing from air pollution. As a nine-year New York resident, my personal midsummer song goes something like this:

-The pitter-patter of dripping AC units.

– The rhythmic panting of the Husky next door.

– The raucous block party down the street.

-Wailing sirens.

-The rotund man who whips down Classon Ave on his motorized wheelchair, blaring soul music from a boom box.

– The lowrider bouncing by the Biggie mural on Franklin, blasting “Hypnotize.”

-Gushing fire hydrants.

-Wailing sirens

-Brawling rats

-Brawling cats

-Steaming trash

-Wailing sirens

On percussion: hamster-sized cockroaches, skittering across my bare body as I try to sleep.

I know. It’s gonna be a hit.

All this beautiful music got me thinking: sure, there are songs about summer in the city – i.e. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer In The City” – but where were the songs about summer in New York City? Where was the refrain for this special circle of hell we survive each year?

Yes, I am aware that soft rock crooner Michael Franks recorded a track literally called “Summer In New York” a while back, but have you listened to the lyrics of that song? Please tell me if any single summer day of your New York life has EVER resembled this:

“We’ll both review Fifth Avenue/From uptown to St. Pat’s/Indulge our vice: Italian ice/Then walk through Central Park/It’s summer in New York.”

Bullshit. Since when is Italian ice a vice? More like, “We’ll stumble down Kosciuszko/From the bar we just closed out/Indulge our sin: three liters of gin/Then dry hump by a bin/Of steaming trash.”

It’s summer in New York!

The fact of the matter is, there just aren’t a lot of songs that effectively capture the glorious grime of a New York summer – so I’ve found a few that make a comprehensive playlist for the season.

  • “Hot in the City” by Billy Idol

What’s the first thing you notice about summer in New York? (Certainly not “Shakespeare In The Park” as Michael Franks would have you believe). The heat! It’s hot as balls here – especially in the train cars sans AC. No one knew this better than Billy Idol, who immortalized the suffocating temperatures in his 1982 hit, “Hot in the City.” Idol also managed to pick up on the all-around friskiness that ensues when the temperatures (and hemlines) rise:

“‘Cause when a long-legged lovely walks by/Yeah you can see the look in her eye/Then you know that it’s/Hot in the city, hot in the city tonight, tonight.” 

By no means a meteorologist, Idol certainly tapped into the hot-blooded heartbeat of a New York scorcher.

  • “Rockaway Beach” by the Ramones

People often think that New Yorkers don’t go to the beach, as if we’re “too busy” – well we do go; and just because we don’t all own Priuses to transport us there doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. Some dig Fort Tilden and Jacob Riis, but for me Far Rockaway is the only beach. Sure it may be a bit filthy and drab, but it’s also home to a thriving surfing community, and Rippers, the best beach bar in town. As it turns out, Rockaway Beach was the sandbar of choice for a little band called the Ramones, too:

“It’s not hard, not far to reach, we can hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach/Up on the roof, out on the street/Down in the playground, the hot concrete/Bus ride is too slow, they blast out the disco on the radio.”

  • “Hot Dog” by Elvis Presley

In a feat of terrible planning, someone somewhere once decided that Hot Dog Season must occur at the same time as Bikini Season. This cruel verdict was clearly authorized by a man, whose bikini bod has never been scrutinized by decades of advertising culture.

It makes no sense that I crave hot dogs every summer, when the rest of my appetite has receded in the grueling heat. But alas, hot dogs I crave – immensely. And thank god I live in New York, where I can literally get a hot dog every corner, 24/7. There’s Sabrett, Grey’s Papaya, and my personal favorite, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs in Coney Island. Nathan’s is also host to the prestigious Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest – an event so barbaric it belongs in the arenas of ancient Rome, but I’d recommend going at least once.

It’s true, there aren’t a lot of great songs about hot dogs, and even this Elvis song (which is not about a hot dog but ostensibly a woman named Hot Dog) isn’t that good either…but at least it’s Elvis!

  • “Out There in the Night” by The Only Ones

Many people think this is a love song – and it is, but not about a human. In fact, The Only Ones’ Peter Perrett wrote it about his dear cat, Candy, who ran away from home one night never to return.

“But what does this have to do with summer in New York,” you ask? Well, I don’t know what borough you live in, but where I dwell the title “summer” and “season of the stray cat” are synonymous. They’re everywhere. On the street. In trashcans. Screaming in heat outside my window. Skittering in new litters on the parking lot concrete. Cats, cats, cats, everywhere. It almost makes sense why Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote that ghastly musical about them. Almost.

  • “Trash” by The New York Dolls

Back in the 1970s, when New York was still dangerous and you could get a dime blowjob where M&M’s World now stands, The New York Dolls were rock n’ roll’s enfants terribles. Surely they had to deal with trash (or, in its summer form: “hot garbage”) far more than we do today. But we still deal with it.

It’s not that there is more or less trash season-to-season, it’s just that the hot sun tends to bake and boil the existing refuse, opening up the pores of all that is rotting so we might smell it more. A LOT more. And don’t even get me started on hot garbage juice, which is the aforementioned boiling refuse in liquid form. Unfortunately the only songs I could find entitled “Hot Garbage” are not too good.

Enter: The New York Dolls. Who could sing about “Trash” better than a cross-dressing miscreant like frontman David Johansen, who, might I add, is from the floating garbage formation itself: Staten Island. No one. I will also ask you: has ever a more New York lyric been penned than:

“Trash, won’t pick it up, don’t take my knife away.” ?

Probably not.

I’m sure I’m missing a few things, but the truth is there just aren’t any good songs about cockroaches or day drinking or swamp ass, which is a pity, because they are all very real things. Especially for summer in New York.

ONLY NOISE: Songs From Abroad

The plan was as simple as it was unprepared; utilize my two-week vacation in Paris and the UK to discover new music, catch some live shows, and, well…write about it. It would be a piece of cake (or, as the French say, a piece de cake). What I didn’t expect was that my innate aversion to planning anything while on vacation – even so much as Googling what concert to attend that night – was far stronger than my desire to potentially write off my entire trip (hiiiii IRS).

You see, I’m a big fan of the “stumble-upon;” those situations you find yourself in by complete accident. Like that time in 2013, when I somehow managed to wind up at a makeshift punk concert. In a cemetery. Attended by patients of a nearby psychiatric hospital and their families. You just can’t plan this stuff.

I like to think I have a particular knack for “stumbling-upon,” in part because I am a nosy journalist who is perpetually eavesdropping and looking for leads. The other part being my inability to read maps or best any skill related to cardinal directions. You’d be amazed at the things you can find when it’s taken you nine years to realize that Seventh Avenue turns into Varick Street, for instance.

Instead of making a thorough agenda to catch live local music, I would let the music find me. I would leave the details of this vacation up to fate – a concept I absolutely do not believe in, but often pretend I do for romantic purposes. Like Baudelaire’s flâneur, I would “walk the city in order to experience it;” though conceivably in less chic duds than the French poet, who rocked a cravat with the best of ‘em.

Despite my brief and faux dependence on “fate,” I did not magically stumble upon a small and dingy jazz club in the 18th arrondissement, or a searing disco dancehall in Belleville. I didn’t even see one accordion the whole time I was in Paris. What le fuck? Was the music angle of my trip stamped out for good? Not exactly…

There was one thing I hadn’t considered while embarking on my journey: music is unavoidable. It’s actually impossible to go anywhere without hearing something – a car radio blaring, a subway busker, a woman singing on the balcony next door. Or, in my case, a variety of mundane and accidental situations that perhaps don’t have the headline power of “In-patient Punks at Graveyard,” but are memorable nonetheless.

So here are my travel scraps; my sonic sampling platter that may seem unremarkable, but will always signify those two lovely weeks spent alone and abroad. The first notable event was a result of my traveling trademark: getting horribly lost. For like, five hours. During this unintentional excursion I somehow managed to wind up smack dab in the Paris Gay Pride Parade. Twice. Two times, separated by two hours, I turned a corner, and was wedged in a river of half-naked bodies covered in glitter and sweat. Not so bad, you say…unless you’re claustrophobic, such as myself.

Naturally music was blaring from every parade float, and there were moments when the mass of limbs felt like one big, mobile dance party. The playlist? Tous Américains. There was a strange call-and-response adaptation of Del Shannon’s 1961 number, “My Little Runaway,” a healthy dose of Riri, and 4 Non Blondes’ only hit, “What’s Up,” shouted by a throng of women holding hand-painted signs. My personal favorite parade song, however, was the Adele vs. Eurythmics mash-up that blared down Rue de Rivoli. The smash-hit hybrid expertly entwined Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep” and Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This.” (According to the Internet, this version is called “Rolling In Sweet Dreams.”) The mash-up was oddly stirring, and admittedly gave me chills considering the context. The mash-up was empowering – which is a sentence I thought I’d never write.

Because I often experience music in a public sphere (concerts, clubs, and now parades), it is easy to forget that some of my most prized musical discoveries transpired in a private setting. So many songs and artists have come to my attention at small house parties, in the passenger seat of a car, or in this case, sitting in my French friend Mathieu’s petit apartment the day after the accidental parade attendance, playing that age-old game of “what should we listen to?”

This was tricky – Mathieu and I have diametrically opposing tastes in music. He makes beats and loves chart-topping rap. We also barely speak each other’s language. Fortunately, sharing and enjoying music has no linguistic boundary. The most polarizing aspect in this is exchange was the taste barrier; there’s something about playing music for someone with a different sonic palate that suddenly makes you question all of the songs you love. Perhaps it is a flaw of the over-empathetic, but I begin to hear my beloved music through their ears, predicting all of the things they might dislike about it. I squirmed while playing him Suicide (super accessible), Pavement, and Maribou State, and Mathieu seemed…politely disinterested. “Ok,” I said (which is fortunately the same in French), “your turn.”

Mathieu’s offering was the Belgian Congolese rapper Damso, who’s 2017 LP Ipséité struck me with its equal propensity for darkness and melody. Naturally I have no fucking clue what Damso is rapping about (though Mathieu assures me he is one of the few “self-deprecating” rappers), I can enjoy his music without the burden of words. Ipséité has been on heavy rotation ever since I left Europe.

Thinking back a few years, I realize that every time I visit Paris Mathieu manages to turn me on to at least one intriguing rap artist. In 2013 it was the oddball South African Okmalumkoolkat, and now, it’s Damso. I’d like to think that I’ve enlightened my friend to some more guitar-based tunes in turn – but I highly doubt it.

If Paris taught me I could be tenderized by a Top 40 mash-up and moved by a rapper I can’t understand, the UK would reveal far darker truths. Namely: my disturbing and newfound affection for DNCE’s “Cake By The Ocean.” DNCE is the dance-rock, Jonas Brothers’ spinoff group formed by Joe Jonas, drummer Jack Lawless, Cole Whittle, and JinJoo Lee in 2015.

Jonas was ostensibly the group’s sole namesake, just as 2015’s “Cake By The Ocean” was their only single verging on, dare I say, a quality tune. The song, or, as I like to call it, assault weapon, is terminally catchy. If Katy Perry’s “Chained To The Rhythm” is an earworm, “Cake” is an ear viper, wiping out every other song in your brain with its venom. The glittering, cross-genre (disco, Broadway musical… calypso?) hit has plagued me for the past five days.  FIVE DAYS of non-stop, constant rotation. I’m beginning to worry I have brain damage as a result, as repeating “Ya ya ya ya ya ya” too many times must surely stunt cellular growth. Should my cognitive abilities be compromised – should I suddenly manifest a secret adoration for Joe Jonas – I will know whom to blame: British Top 40 radio.

“Cake By The Ocean” bombarded every bus, convenience store, and cab I was in. It was following me (like a malicious viper!), slowly poisoning my eardrums, trying to dismantle my precious collection of “good music.” Jonas and Co. threatened to undo years of “good taste” with one insanely catchy song that on paper, I would hate. Those bastards.

They say when you travel alone, you “learn about yourself.” While this may be true, it doesn’t account for the kinds of things you learn. Sure, I learned that I can in fact read maps, sleep anywhere, and have half-assed conversations with my high school-level French. But I also learned that deep inside me, there is a dark, shameful little place that loves, and I mean LOVES the song “Cake By The Ocean.” And that is something I can’t unlearn.

ONLY NOISE: Aural Anesthesia

Last year, before the presidential election tore through the fabric of reality like Dr. Who’s Tardis, a friend invited me to indulge in her Groupon – for a float. “Floating” aka “Flotation Therapy,” is a physically simple practice achieved by resting your naked self atop a highly concentrated saline solution. The super salty pool (upwards of 1,000 pounds of salt for just a bath’s amount of tepid water) suspends your bod like a buoy, and allegedly alleviates you of any tactile sensation. Though comprised of rudimentary ingredients, this spa trend can cost exorbitant prices ($75-$130 per “float”) when paired with mood lighting and Pandora’s “Enya radio.”

But what is the purpose of Flotation Therapy? The answer might be found in the treatment’s other name: the “Sensory Deprivation Tank.” Aside from sounding like the title of a Ken Russell film, the name taps into a deeper human longing than relaxation: the desire to feel nothing. Sure the tank suggests the separation of mind and body, spinal alignment, and even hallucinations. Benefits of a good “float” nod at the metaphysical – spiritual transcendence that can be accomplished by many trips to the tank over a period of time – but it was the nothingness I was most intrigued by (in part because I don’t believe in spiritual transcendence).

“Numbness” and “nothingness” are concepts more foreign to me than “health insurance” and “good credit.” Truthfully, I’ve always felt all the feelings; and if there’s one thing I’ve never felt, it’s nothing. I can’t help but wonder – if there’s a new age miracle treatment for feeling that boils down to a well-lit, salty bath – could music conjure a similar absence of stimulation…or better: emotion?

For music to negate feeling would be a true feat of inversion, like a baker un-baking bread. Music was made for emoting; it’s an especially potent dialect of emotional language that can make us dance to songs we think are crap and cry during trite commercials. But is there a song in existence capable of evoking the anti-feels? If so, I am desperate to find it.

Just as I was skeptical of the tank’s pledge of “sensory deprivation,” I doubted I could find a song, let alone an entire record, that would act as an aural anesthetic, an antidote to pop’s poisonous love songs, rap’s wrath, and disco’s boogie. But despite my suspicion, I knew right where to start looking: the ambient soundscape. After all, what better to numb ourselves with than the a-rhythmic, a-melodic wanderings of the ambient-electronic canon? I set myself up for a series of highly subjective, uncontrolled tests after a period of distress when even listening to the new Harry Styles single would make me weep (and not because it’s bad).

I first selected a couple of records – my “test drugs.” Then, during a moment of particularly intense emotion, I would pop one of my pills and see what happened. The first tablet to swallow was William Basinski’s groundbreaking Disintegration Loops. In making this four-album saga, Basinski recorded fragments of ambient music through a tape loop that captured the gradual deterioration of the tape itself – the subtle corrosion of the magnetic strip barely audible, but somehow still palpable to the listener. The result is a somnolent meditation on repetition, impermanence, and decay. It is a beautiful and delicate work that could probably benefit someone with insomnia, but that wasn’t exactly my problem. Sure, “somnolent meditation” and delicate beauty sound all good and anesthetizing, but then I thought about it a bit more: the Disintegration Loops are literally the sound of something (though tape) dying. Dying is sad. Sad is an emotion. Next.

Surely I could turn to my trusty No Wave hero Glenn Branca for a good shot of sonic Novocain – he doesn’t even believe in melody! I swallowed the eccentric composer’s 1981 album The Ascension like a fistful of Advil, and awaited its sweet relief. Unfortunately, The Ascension goes down a bit differently when you’re having an off day, and though I’m all for aggressive music, the record should perhaps be labeled thus:

“Side effects of listening to The Ascension during a period of emotional distress may include: discordant notes, furious drumming, agitation, crashing synth-cymbals, blood-boiling rage, satanic distortion, terror, and face melting guitar solos.”

I was beginning to feel like Goldilocks. William Basinski was too soft. Glenn Branca, too hard. Where was my happy medium? And by happy medium, I mean complete and utter nothingness.

I trudged through countless artists; Michael Gordon, Nils Frahm, Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, Oneohtrix Point Never – each sound, though wildly unconventional, still managed to stoke that pesky human defect: feeling. I was about to call it quits on my quest…and then I remembered his name.

Steve. Reich. If I had taken in Basinski and Branca like vitamins, maybe it was time to inject myself with Reich’s 1976’s masterpiece Music For 18 Musicians. Reich has long been a pioneer of minimal music, and it’s silly I didn’t turn to his catalog for my little experiment sooner. Could his compositions truly make me comfortably numb?

The answer, at long last, was yes. I had found the song to feel nothing to.

Music For 18 Musicians, though technically an album, really functions as an unyielding 59-minute song. Its continuous nature (there isn’t one breath of silence in the entire record) is necessary for optimal catharsis, because while music is the space between the notes, those spaces can destroy you. Space allows for thought, and thought is no damn good when you’re trying to sedate emotion. Music For 18 Musicians on the other hand, is so relentless, so packed with notes, that your brain is constantly trying to keep up with them, and has no capacity for wandering thought. Perfect.

When looking into the history of Music For 18 Musicians, I found that Reich was inspired by Psychoacoustics, which is the scientific study of our psychological and physiological response to sound (noise, speech, and music). Knowing this I feel a bit less nutty for reacting in such an intense way to Reich’s piece. Perhaps he wanted to offer the ability to momentarily transcend sentiment in the same way Flotation Therapy seeks to transcend sensation. Maybe more than an aural anesthetic, Music For 18 Musicians is an antibiotic, obliterating the good and bad bacteria simultaneously, destroying all cells in its path. Like a natural disaster, it has no emotional motive; its dense mass is purely self-perpetuating.

Aside from being the anthem for neutrality, I must say: Music For 18 Musicians is also the best break-up record of all time – if you’re actually trying to get over the break-up, that is. Trust me, I’ve tried all the others, and a year ago my heartbreak playlist would be wildly different. I’ve bathed in Muddy Waters and drank Jackie Wilson’s “Lonely Teardrops.” I’ve anointed myself with Nick Cave’s rage and drowned myself in the cold cruelty of Smog. But all they’re good for is salting the wound. Now, I don’t want a Hank Williams Band-Aid… I want a Steve Reich IV drip.

So what do you do when you’ve found the perfect drug? Get it approved by the FDA, patent it, and stock up. But the problem with any medication is twofold. Firstly, the effects wear off after a while, and secondly, you tend to build up a tolerance. Sure, the flotation tank and Steve Reich can suspend you in salty and sonic pools of beautiful nothingness – they can even eviscerate the pain for a whole hour. But what do you do for the remaining twenty-three, when you can’t be naked in a bath or listening to music? I guess therein lies the real experiment.

ONLY NOISE: Creatures of Discomfort

A few nights ago at a bar, someone asked me a reasonable but difficult question: what do I want to experience when listening to music? What do I look for in a band? I floundered briefly, rattling off some vague declaration about placing a “good song” above any technical music ability.

“What do you mean, a ‘good’ song?” my interviewer prodded (this person is a reporter by day). “You can’t just say, ‘good’ song; obviously you prefer a ‘good’ song – but what makes a good song to you?”

Touché. I stewed over the question momentarily, thinking of other forms of art I’m drawn to; imagining the display of fleshy imagery covering the wall above my home desk – a collection many houseguests find revolting. Boobs, hairless cats, cadaverous feet, Hans Bellmer’s doll. Nondescript, pink perversions.

I thought about my lifelong gravitation towards objects and subjects of disgust; the numerous occasions my parents would come home from work asking what I was watching.

Confessions of a Serial Killer: Jeffrey Dahmer,” I would reply, munching a Cheeto. My dad still recommends movies to me by saying, “We just watched this really depressing, fucked up film – you’d love it!” without an ounce of sarcasm. We also have a game in which we text each other when famous people die. First to text wins.

I considered my fondness for bitter, astringent, and blazing flavors; my love of rare and raw meat; my affinity for unsettling (but funny!) books.

Looking back at my inquirer, I delivered the most succinct reply I could muster:

“I just want to be assaulted,” I said.

Sonically assaulted, of course…but what does that mean?

Last year, while still working as a panty designer for a big company called, let’s say, Veronica’s Privacy, I found myself in need of a date night…with me. I scrolled through concert listings in search of something unexpected. If there was one thing I was not in the mood for that evening, it was “good old fashioned rock n’ roll.” I did not want dream pop, nor chill wave, nor beach wave, nor dream wave. I craved something dour and unpleasant, like ya do.

Sifting through gigs by Sunflower Bean and Shark Muffin, I paused on a vaguely familiar name: Glenn Branca. Where had I heard it? Something about the name commanded respect. Though I was mystified as to why, an air of provocation and intrigue hung around those two words. I bought a ticket immediately.

Taking a seat at The Kitchen in Chelsea, I glanced around. The only other solo-goers were middle-aged men who looked like they used to be in bands. Silver hair. Black Sonic Youth t-shirts. Sensible, manly shoes. Leather belts. The low stage was set with a drum kit, a bass, and three guitars. When Branca and Co. sauntered onstage not a word was spoken before they crashed into a belligerent wall of sound. Fumbling for my complimentary earplugs (courtesy of the venue), I felt bathed in distortion – baptized in cacophony. Discomfort. A hail of splinters. Railroad ties and metal siding. It was all being hurled at us – and we loved it. Were my concert mates likeminded gluttons for punishment? Did they too adore unlistenable, violent music at all hours, even in the wee, small, pre-coffee hours? I left The Kitchen feeling like I’d been in a boxing match – no – like I’d gotten the shit beaten out of me by a biker. Boxing is too clean and dignified a sport for how I felt. And yet there was another sensation spread all over me like cream cheese on a bagel: elation. For lack of a less annoying word: transcendence.

There are entire message boards full of people who want to be tied up for fun. Fetishists get shoved into bags, closets, vacuum-sealed plastic. For many, there is pleasure in physical discomfort. Factions of the sex accouterment trade cater to such needs. So what about auditory discomfort? Where be the cottage industry for audio-de-philers? (see what I did there?) Where is the safe space if you’re looking to be cleansed by rage and mayhem and high decibel levels?

I’ve certainly found my fix in Branca and his No Wave ilk – John Zorn, Steve Reich, and John Cage, to name a few. Then there is Girl Band, the Irish foursome I’ve been admiring for the past year. The Dubliners are fresh on my mind as I just saw them live a few nights ago and felt intoxicated after their antagonizing set. Screaming? Odd time signatures? Squealing guitar? Weaponized bass? Yes, please. Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside just thinkin’ about it.

Two nights ago I was speaking with an artist friend of mine. A brilliant photographer, she also curates at the Museum of Sex, and has a keen eye for the odd and outcast. “I’m always looking for art that is standing on the ledge and about to step off of it,” she said, her head bobbing over a goblet of frozen margarita at Dallas BBQ. I nodded in agreement, nursing brain freeze and thinking about why I’m so enamored of grotesque and furious things. Her mention of the “ledge” intrigued me. Is that where the fascination lies? Perhaps music and art that seems “out of control” is in fact the most controlled, as it assures us we can still keep it together while staring at the messiest aspects of humanity.

Girl Band is a prime example of this, in fact. The group’s singer Dara Kiley suffered an intense psychotic episode in the lead up to their debut release, Holding Hands With Jamie. Understandably, much of that record’s lyrical content was inspired by the event. You don’t have to listen closely to realize that Girl Band’s music sounds like a psychotic breakdown – or at least what you would expect one to sound like. If you’re drunk enough, sleep deprived, or maybe just malnourished, giving Holding Hands With Jamie a spin can make you feel like you are going crazy – but you probably aren’t. And maybe that’s the amazing thing – that someone like Dara Kiley can survive psychosomatic hell and then channel his agony into an unconventionally beautiful record with the help of bandmates. Perhaps some artists stand on the ledge, so we don’t have to.