Random or real?

[Phil Lawton]

I don't know about you, but I much prefer the Golden Throated One's lyrics when they're nonsensical. Although it's harder to sing along with the GTO's random burblings, they do add lots of things to the general CT ethos - a sense of mystique, detachment and uniqueness. I've always felt that it allowed CT to use the GTO's voice as another instrument.

When she uses real lyrics (a la BBK, M&K and bits of HOLV), I feel that it tends to detract from the overall effect, even if, as in the case of BBK, the lyrics are almost too personal to bear.

So what's your poison? Real or random? Cocteauese or coherent? Indecipherable or insightful?

[zed]

Phil,........

at this point, it's been so long......i don't care if she sings the
the train schedual brtwwen london and northhampton!!!


.........but....i do understand...i just honestly don't have a preferance. if i did, i'd have to come down on the random side a bit more than the real.
..........but, really , it's entierly up to her..i'll listen .

Z.

[mmmender]

this is one of those questions like 'the chicken or the egg'........what i'm keen on knowing is does she start with words and mutate them into sounds or start with sounds and try to form words. i think liz's vocals have always been coherent it's just her way of singing them. most of the songs are created using real words, granted they may be in german, polish, french or backwards at times, but they're still real words nonetheless. as her style and maturity developed she began to twist her words more, making them even less comprehensible to listeners....this explains the whole FCC tour. she retreated into that 'scat' style which i hated....but understood.

what it comes down to is that it really doesn't matter what she's singing....could be the financial section of yesterdays paper for all i care.....the true meaning lies in how she sings.....not what she sings.

after all....the medium IS the message!

ps.......damn fine thread phil !!!

[ScottL]

Ah yes, good topic. I too take to medium over content where Liz goes. I however like many of her explicit lyrics. I also like the imaginary lyrics it evokes in me, where I am unsure of what she was saying. One of the striking things I love about Liz is how she opted for obscure/made-up lyrics when she didn't have an explicit message to sing. Liz seems to get into the singing as much as possible and the more she does, the more it moves me.

As for real lyics, I believe she got most in to the singing of real lyrics when they were close to her...not to speculate on what she REALLY felt..but if she felt it more intimately, she'd be more into the singing of it. I guess so because it seems the more the mind is busy racking over WHAT to sing, it is harder to sing it. Ultimately I believe singing always expresses(if anything) more feeling than words could ever hope to describe. The songs which blow me away most(a good mix of real and random here) always carry some emotional intensity in how they are sung. When the words fit, it is a bonus. Take Bluebeard...'Aliveness..Exploration...Energy'....w hen I'm basking in the light in that song, I hear the words AND feel the emotion pouring through and am like, "Hell yeah!".

So I'll take what ever too, but when I like the words, I do like them for what they are as well. I get what your saying, but I'd prefer Liz-random-speak over the newspaper....because when she did chose words later, they weren't arbitrary after all. As for too personal, that is for Liz to decide...never mind hearing anything in terms of being too personal.
Phil: And did you mean BBK or FCC? I guess you did mean BBK...but FCC woulda fit that group in your view as well right?

[Lucibelle]

Personally, Phil, one of the things that I loved about Liz's singing when I first heard her (oh, so many years ago) was that her style of singing allowed the listener to create their own personal meaning. Everyone has their own enterpretation as to what's being said, whether they hear actual words or complete gibberish. To me, it's kind of like speaking in tongues, really. And yes, as Mmmender pointed out, often it is simply the way that she sings her words. Kind of the english (or any other) language spoken with a Cocteau-ese dialect. But just like their way of making the music, the lyrics are not handled in a traditional manner. Now some people just can't handle this, and for them there are Britney Spears, N'sunc (not a typo), and the other 'bands' mentioned in this weeks issue of 'Tiger Beat'. But seriously.... As a songwriter, I often find that the pre-lyric monkey babble is far better than any english that I try to put in its place! Then other times the words just start pouring out and I'd better be recording right then and there or else I'll lose it! I appreciate that she had the guts to do something so non-conventional. So it's really hard to take sides, so to speak. I love the babble type lyrics of the early Twins, but once she started making things easier to understand, the magic of what she had to say was equal to the way she chose to say it. But for me, the music always has to come first, so she could read the ingredients list off of my cereal box and she'd make it sound like a soul-shaking experience!

[Phil Lawton]

Scott

You're right, BBK was a typo.

Sod...someone's just interrupted me and I've lost my train of thought.

Anyhow, the gist was probably along the lines of this: I've always liked CT's output for the feeling they tried to get across, rather than any particular message. As callous as this may sound, I'm not too interested in what was going on in the Fraser/Guthrie relationship at any time, apart from the moods/melodies (Mood And The Melodies? I digress) that any angst may have generated.

It always amazes me how other folk can dig out so many coherent lyrics from, say, FCC - it may be mental conditioning, but I can never do it. I also tend to shy away from web pages giving transcriptions of CT lyrics. I don't want to know what the noises/words might be...it would destroy some of the mystique for me.

I can't think of one song on FCC (which, admittedly, is not one of my favourites, bar a couple of tracks) which even approaches the desolation and sorrow of "Pink Orange Red" (or the rest of the "Echoes"/"Dynamine" hybrid, come to that). It's unfathomable vocal says more about the Fraser id than all of the Four Calendar Cafe album, although I accept that the GTO, Guthrie and Raymonde had all moved on since that point.

I'm starting to ramble now, so I'll shut up.

[randomrob]

Liz making sense to me is just an indicator of the band's dissolution. Once the focus was turned up enough, it was no longer the eerie-catchy thing anymore, it was just heart-rendingly sad. Put another way, the closet collapsed for lack of a skeleton? hmmm

[zed]

from my .po.v.......the end was implicit in the begining.

it was, and i think, continues to be the natural matureing of talent.
the process can be terriblely painfull and take years.
the personal stuff aside, the inner path of really becoming aware of your abilitys as and artist is a life long task and not suited for the faint of heart.

Liz, as often as she's been described as etherial and what not
seems to me to be made of very tough stuff.
the journey she's on as an artist has at times been heart rending,
to say the least.........i belive she's gonna come back at some point and blow the heads off of the collective community.

some people that can't keep up will fall away...so my dears..

keep your ears to he ground, and an eye to the sky...

she'll be back.

ok...that was reasonably lucid enough for one day.

Z.

[Sean_Montgomery]

Hmmm....this is a very good question. But in the end, I think that I have no real preference when it comes to lyrical 'coherency'. It's more about the sonic atmosphere of the song. I mean, I love Robin and Liz's version of 'Song to the Siren', but I equally love 'Crushed', where the true lyrics are pretty much anyone's guess.

Having said that.... I think that the Twins were at their best before Liz started the overt 'self analysis' in her lyrics. Although it could be that I'm projecting my own artistic experience on her here. You see...I used to paint a fair bit. And I think that while my work got technically better in university, the content wasn't as interesting, because by then I understood myself well enough to know exactly what I was trying to say. I think there's something to be said for not knowing yourself fully, and just expressing yourself from a place of pure emotion rather than intellectualizing it.

[mmmender]

ignorance IS bliss

[ScottL]

Phil: I hear ya there(esp. about the LF/RG angst) and I don't zone in on what all the words are or must be. FCC for example, for a few songs I was curious and went to lyric pages, but mostly I accept whatever my experience renders. With 'Know Who You Are..'(which I find quite desolate like POR myself), my imagined words are fairly coherent and close to others'....but with 'Theft...' I remained content with my own nonsense images...with various phrases popping in...but it is mostly a vague emotional sonic experience...the only other thing, I am not obsessed with the meaning of the words or what it was for Liz, if I have associated meaning, fine..but I don't seek out TRUE MEANING in that sense...

Rob: Good point there, to me, FCC was at the turning point...just reaching almost full coherency, while still quite eerie(hints of an earlier lost time). And to me, I think the words fit that place in time and the culmination of a career of making music turning out to be so sad as you describe. I care to embrace such sadness as much as hapiness when the time suits me.

Zed: Being a late comer, the end was explicit from the beginning of my listening stint...sigh...but meaning mostly that I was able to hear Garlands thru M&K in no particular order...by acquisition..so when I look back, FCC is a beautiful sad turning point, after which I find the lyrics(Summerblink, Primitive Heart,etc) even more trite and unmoving for me. We like what we like...Phil and I are basically flip-flopped on FCC and M&K..I was thinking most of what he said about FCC applies to M&K for me. While in some of post FCC she goes non-lyrical or obscure I guess...Flock of Soul is a delightful non-lyrical experience for me...whether or not there are words..

after all this, I'd say, it is hard not to favor the random/imaginary cuz so few great and prolific singers take such a course(or had). I like how free and experimental Liz was with her non-words, her words, her voice...I can't divide it, I love Liz's singing/lyric thing for the whole that it is, the entire evolution...

[jana]

i personally enjoyed the songs where you can't understand but maybe one word. That way you can make of it what you will.

[zed]

Jana.....


very good point!

the resonance of just a word or two really piques the ear..and seems to just vaugely point a direction....

of course..leaveing you to find your own way to the heart.

:)

zed...the utterly miserable today....

[jana]

this whole discussion reminds me of something.
When i moved to london, i had to quit the band i was in. Being the singer i wrote all lyrics/melodies. I tend to sing where you can't understand a word .....
well after i left, my old band members decided to form a completely new band...of which i was all for. 5 months later, i find out they're using all of my old songs with a new singer! Since she couldn't understand what i was singing...she butchered her own interpretations. I was to say the least ..fuming. I then let the boys know the actual lyrics (which a few of the songs were about a rape i endured as a teenager and thus is why i sang the songs in a way that nobody knew but me...not even the other bandmembers.)
Basically they quit using those songs asap. =)
anyway....music is a way for me to express myself/emotions. But some things are better unsaid (atleast in a way others can understand).
It made me feel better to sing about things that had happened to me without making it so upfront to where people might pity me for it.
whether liz was the same way with her lyrics...who knows. I still admire that little tart no matter what though =)

[zed]

not being a singer...
though raised in a household full of the best in jazz and clasical music..i remember listening to ella fitzgerad and my father commenting to other band mates about her "phraeing."

i ran to the dictionary to see what that was...huh?

well, it wasn't what my dad was talking about!

but over time i learned just what it WAS about...ella, billie, janis, it came clear. then of course along came Liz!
and a brand new conection was made...:D


like what was said earlier...it's the way she sings that is the real
power behind her. of course having amazing range, naturally clear bell like tone and the intellegence to use it, don't hurt!

she's just ,...Liz. you know?
that's enough


:) Z

[mike_mhg]

...Liz, as often as she's been described as etherial and what not
seems to me to be made of very tough stuff.
the journey she's on as an artist has at times been heart rending,
to say the least.........i belive she's gonna come back at some point and blow the heads off of the collective community.
Well I wish she would hurry up, as I'm getting on a bit.

[Phil Lawton]

What a strange thread to dig up.

[Baddy2shoos]

there's a lot of digging going on right now!

[mike_mhg]

....and then the strait guy leads with:

"I often have a dig in Pandora's Box"

[Phil Lawton]

....and then the strait guy leads with:

"I often have a dig in Pandora's Box"

And then the buffoon says "Make sure you take your wristwatch off first."