F*ck the Algorithm - Issue 010
The words ‘skin orgasm’ make me feel a bit ill. ‘Aesthetic chills’ isn’t much better but at least it doesn’t bring my lunch back up. I’ll settle with ‘frisson’ – despite it still feeling a bit pretentious – as the best of a bad bunch.
If you don’t know, frisson (and the more horrible words for it) is that warm, goosepimply feeling you get when the music hits just right. Not everyone gets it, but 50-66% of people do, and I’m one of the lucky ones.
There are a few moments in a few songs that reliably allow me to achieve this feeling, but there is something else that will do it time and time again - and it can be achieved by anyone, anywhere with no equipment, instruments or training. Although you do need at least one other person. Vocal harmony.
The day the bassist in our band and I discovered we could do this - in my teenage bedroom learning blink-182 songs - was one of the most exciting of my life. When you nail a harmony and the sound resonates and phases around you, there are few better feelings in all of humanity… probably. And we still do it drunkenly (and annoyingly, and badly) whenever we get the chance.
*Skip to 7:46 of Ara Batur by Sigur Ros, 1:55 of Wind Up by Foo Fighters, or 3:31 of Returning Empty Handed by Underoath if you want examples.
1. Destroyed By Hippie Powers – Car Seat Headrest
The pre-chorus in this track hits like a sledgehammer thanks to the vocal harmonies. Everything is quite loose and sloppy, a swaggering, inebriated production of swaying drums and soupy guitars - then boom!
Bitter Sun by Magazine Beach doesn’t have the same single impact moment but is full of that deliberately shonky aesthetic. The group vocal tucked into the background of the verse is so natural you wonder if they even meant to record it. Harmony duty is shared across a male and a female voice, rather than the multitracked single vocalist in the CSH track, which resonates in a slightly different way but I still can’t get enough.
It hits in the most determined and reassuring section of the song and provides sweet relief from the melancholic or even sinister unpredictability of the arrangement and tonality up to that point.
2. No Cigar – Millencolin
I’ve been listening to this track for decades and until I started writing this issue I couldn’t have told you that Millencolin are a Swedish band. I’ve also never really thought about what drew me to the track before, but on reflection there is so much harmonic drama in the music, an emotional complexity I wasn’t getting from American pop punk bands I liked at the time.
After a not-so-brief trip down a rabbit hole of Swedish punk sub-genres, I discovered Trallpunk, a politically charged melodic form of punk that uses lots of vocal harmonies. And I may become obsessed.
The operatic grandiosity of I svartsjukans klor by Lastkaj 14 is undercut perfectly by the punk production and simple instrumentation it uses, meaning it never feels forced or pompous. It’s far less polished than the Millencolin but is packed with the same harmonic complexity. They’ve slipped straight into my regular rotation.
3. Blood I Bled – The Staves
This is an appropriate song title – The Staves are a near perfect example of blood harmony, the seamless melding of the voices of close relations.
It takes a lot of guts to hold onto the ‘bad’ intervals in your harmonies for as long as they do before finally letting them resolve somewhere more comfortable and only singers at the very top of their game can hit such crunchy combinations cleanly without it sounding like a mistake.
Flock of Dimes may not have the sisterly connection of The Staves, but the vocals are similarly tight with the same bravery to leave the tension of dissonant harmonies to brew and steep before resolving. There’s also a less overt folksiness to Two that links me back to Staves, it’s charming without being kitsch – modern with respect for the past.
4. Hide and Seek – Imogen Heap
This may be a contentious choice as the harmonies are created technologically – but the final result is a haunting piece of music that grabs you by the ears.
It’s so novel and unusual a use of vocoder tech that it’s difficult to match it up with anything else, modern or otherwise. What I found is Call Me Mistress by Geo Aghinea, a London-based Romanian musician living with severe hearing loss.
Geo channels the chants and Doinas of their Romanian grandmother through heavily processed and synthesised soundscapes – my link back to Hide and Seek - that are shaped by the hearing aid technology they have at the time of production. The music is a glimpse into the technologically mediated world they inhabit.
Listen to the full playlist here
Be prepared to dive into something new and then let me know what you think in the comments. Good music deserves conversation.
