ceo - Come With Me

I sometimes have a problem with music that is too three-dimensionally happy or perky sounding. Many people react to that issue by saying, "OH MAN, YOU'RE SUCH A DOWNER. GO MOPE IN A CORNER AND LISTEN TO YOUR RADIOHEAD AND SMITHS." But it's not as simple as that, not by a long shot. NOT BY AN ALL CAPS LONG SHOT. Can I make the commitment to never again write in all caps on this blog? I don't know. I just don't know.

I think I listen to a decent amount of "happy" music, but to me, if a song sounds completely happy, it just doesn't ring true. The Talking Heads make happy-sounding music, but there is always this strange undercurrent of paranoia or desperation, like Byrne is always looking over his shoulder, waiting for reality to smack him in the face. To me, that doesn't make the song any less happy, it just makes it more realistic. Take a song like "Hello, Goodbye" by the Beatles, or "Big Day" by XTC. Musically, they both sound like the emotional equivalent of a Smurfs episode, but lyrically "Hello Goodbye" is about Smurfette and Grouchy Smurf fruitlessly attempting to reconcile their diametrically opposed worldviews, and "Big Day" is about Grouchy's fundamental distrust of the institution of marriage. Man, if your name is Grouchy, there's just not much room for character development. Poor guy. No wonder he was in such a bad mood all the time!

There's been a lot of electro-pop coming out lately, and some of it is pretty good. I'll listen to many of these albums and enjoy them for a while, but after a while they grate because they're just too perky and corny sounding. I need at least a sliver of angst; it really doesn't take much. ceo has more than a sliver. He has a pretty sizable angstbag he seems to be toting around. It's the confluence of the happy and the sad, the combustibility of both occurring so intensely at the same time, that creates the beauty. That sentence was way too serious-sounding. I like turtles!