Crab Lord Destroys City

A lot of the songs I’ve been writing lately seem to focus around unusual or “quirky” subject matter. I can see how this could put someone off – tales of weird shit can quickly get very annoying. I think the reason that a lot of psychedelic music is very much of a time and place is the imagery – often taken so seriously, even when being humourous, and so clearly allegorical and rooted in the attitudes of the time. (I think one of the great things about mid-60s Dylan is the way he constantly introduces surreal and scattershot humour into his songs – humour that is invariably not funny).

The thing is, I want to get away from the school of songwriting which deals with well-trodden tropes. “You’re just so bad, babe, but I can’t get enoughhaya”. There are good songs written about these stories in that style, but they’re few and far between – and most are probably just echoes of the platonic original, written by Robert Johnson or one of those old delta bluesdudes.

When is an original song, a surprising song, “just” a novelty song? A one-joke gag, a one-idea track that turns up and goes nowhere? Some would consider They Might Be Giants’ Birdhouse in Your Soul in that category – I think it’s properly amazing. Generally their work plays with language, genre, structure, and meaning – which some people hate, and I find deeply creative and inspiring.

Songs are like scupltures -  except underneath the smooth stone is something living and breathing.  I’m interested in the living flesh encased within the stone – I want to find the cracks in the song to work my way inside it. There needs to be a rough edge which catches my fingertips as I run my hand over it. Overused tropes, overproduction, familiar lyrics, all of these feel like a smooth block of marble to me. Pretty on the outside, no idea what’s going on inside. Equally well, it can’t all be cracks – that’s a pile of rubble and not a sculpture – and if I want to run my hand through rubble, physically or aurally, I’ll go to a building site.

Originality is very hard to come by, and constantly tackling “quirky” subjects is way to not get taken very seriously. But, to paraphrase John Flansburgh (I think), that’s something an artist actually has little control over.