“Total Trash”

Abstract

Analysis and rock music: are they incompatible? Is popular music criticism’s analytic methodology ill-equipped for its own purposes? In the above passage, Paul Clarke complains that modes of inquiry developed for the analysis of western art music, focusing upon the text and the musical ‘score,’ are inappropriate for the analysis of rock music. He believes rock analysts wrongly attempt to fit the music within a narrow, established template. A more profitable approach, he suggests, would evaluate the music “not on any one aural strand - lyrical, musical or vocal - but on the complex of created relationships between sounds as they act on us through time.” Clarke’s analysis would represent a composite set of interests. His insights would emerge from his own interpretive experience as well as from a technical understanding of the music. His observations would be less confined by preexisting prescriptive or circumscribed guidelines. Instead, Clarke suggests that “we can afford a degree of critical pragmatism, borrowing or adopting musical, literal, linguistic, literary and drama critical terms and techniques where necessary” to represent the song’s audible effects. These different methodologies would enable the analyst to relate the song’s “situation” or “story” as a combination of all its component parts.Ten years have passed since Clarke issued these statements, and in that time many changes have occurred in popular music analysis. For example, the sound of specific styles or artists is now a recognized area of analytical concern. I am using sound, here, in a manner analogous to Barthes’s “grain” of the voice.2 As he explains, the “grain” is an individual property composed of those discrete characteristics which distinguish one musical artist’s performances or recordings from another. He sees the “grain” as a communicable element upon which a dialogue may be founded between performer and listener. Indeed, this notion of the “grain” or sound traditionally has dictated rock and roll’s critical discourse. By referring to the sound of a particular era or style, listeners encapsulate a particular and distinctive auditory impression for their own purposes.3 In short, sound is that quality of the music’s being that we often feel instinctively inclined to judge and evaluate.While analysts recently have undertaken comparatively in-depth examinations of sound, Clarke’s points of contention are still with us.4 For while their analyses may seek to ‘control’ the music’s effect or the way it captures one’s imagination, the song remains rooted in its contextual milieu.5 Even though the rock analyst may structure or deconstruct the song through a variety of techniques, the musical object usually represents a well-defined genre. Musical texts, as such, are based in a style defined through their own self-evident conventions. Analyses that we undertake on those texts rely on familiarization: our analytical conclusions and observations seem comprehensible because they relate to the recognizable style and form of the musical text. They examine lyrics that have an acknowledged function (whether through a narrative system or culturally expressive language) and music that is familiar through its style (understood within its conventions or in notated form). A situation exists, then, where rock music analysts are constantly refining their descriptive devices upon musical objects of discourse that, themselves, seem comparatively stable. In this paper, however, I wish to examine music that may bring the analyst’s dependence upon lyrical and music-notational devices into question. My discussion will center around issues of sound that complicate our analytical efforts to ‘control’ a particular generic type - post punk music.The term post punk implies music that expands on punk’s noticeable stylistic traits.6 When critics label a band as ‘post punk’ they arrive at a compromise: the group’s music clearly contains elements of punk, but also enough outside influences to blur its conspicuous similarities. However, where punk music espouses a return to rock and roll’s simple, unadorned ‘roots,’ post punk appears more concerned with exploration and experimentation. Post punk is involved not only with a deliberate, exaggerated foregrounding of sound but a distortion of musical styles as well. As musical “bricolage,” post punk is a compendium containing interpretive versions of borrowed and assembled styles.7 Post punk, for example, incorporates genres such as heavy metal, funk, country and jazz, among others, to establish a unique view of music’s past and present. One might even say that through its appropriation of musical styles post punk perverts rock’s system of aesthetic values.If rock music criticism’s investigative procedures are dictated by the musical content, how am I or any other analyst to contend with post punk music that seems outside our familiar notions of style and form? While we recognize that analytical explanations ought to grow out of an understanding between the analyst and musical text, how can we strive for such a state when stripped of our normal literary-critical, transcriptive or structuralist abilities?In what ways does post punk music frustrate analytical efforts? Often it requires the analyst to contort the realm of the “page poem” and “musical score” tradition. The lyrics in post punk music frequently deviate from normal or familiar narrative representations. In many cases the verbal content is audibly ambiguous, inconclusive or indecipherable. For example, singer/lyricist David Yow of the Chicago band, The Jesus Lizard, screams, gargles, whispers, breathes heavily and occasionally speaks the words to the song. In this way, lyrics, as such, rarely conform to our standard notions of ‘coherent’ meaning. Yow explains his approach to lyric writing thus:One might guess that undertaking a literary analysis of such lyrics would not yield entirely satisfactory findings. Perhaps our analytical observations would make more sense when drawn from a musical transcription. Here, however, post punk again makes such designs problematic. For post punk bands often deliberately pursue distinctive sonorities outside of rock’s ordinary perimeters. Many groups define themselves through unique manipulations of the music’s textural levels. In particular, increased developments both in guitar technique and in recording technology allow for entire fields of new sound structures. Mere transcriptions cannot explain how such processes work within the music. Indeed, transcription seems to be not only ill-suited for many advanced technical or studio creations, but often times difficult to realize, as well. How, for example, would one notate sounds described as such:In such a case, a transference from sound to notation presents many problems.10If words and music impede traditional methods of visual-representative analysis, the critic seems left with few options. These factors, then, have contributed to post punk music’s relative lack of academic analytical attention. The post punk aesthetic has been the subject, instead, of journalistic scrutiny. Journalists admittedly have different aims than those critics who employ music theory and analysis. Often they are not concerned with the music’s internal devices aside from their relation to the piece’s overall ‘beauty’ or ‘effect.’ Their writing, like a large amount of nineteenth century art music criticism, does not seek to unravel the music’s details.11 Instead, it views the musical work as a unified creation. The journalist’s function is to mirror the musical text in language; the goal is to communicate the music’s affective qualities to a reading audience. While such tactics have been out of circulation in the academic criticism of art music for decades, writing of this nature virtually defines popular music journalism’s present state. The writings of British music journalist Simon Reynolds illustrate how such descriptive language represents the music in symbolism:Reynolds’ writing employs what Roman Jakobson recognizes as poetic language to convey the music’s sound to a reading audience. This language is suffused with metonymic and metaphoric constructions.13 For example, in the above passage a phrase such as “mind furnace” is used as an equivalent representation of certain sonorities in Sonic Youth’s music. In this phrase Reynolds links two contiguous words in an internal relationship. He assumes the reader will equate the overheatedness within a furnace as a correspondent sensation in the mind. The furnace’s function then is associated with the mind’s activities. The two words combine, however, to form one metaphorical equivalence with the textural quality of Sonic Youth’s guitars. Through this synaesthetic process, Reynolds induces the reader to imagine a musical sound.Reynolds’ language directs itself within a wider metalingual context in this passage as well. For Jakobson, metalingual constructions are built around codes that we use as checkpoints for correspondence and communication.14 As speakers, we anticipate that our audience will deduce encoded meaning in our metalingual syntax. For example, in the above excerpt both “dubscape” and “drones” refer to extramusical associations as well as specific musical techniques. Each reader will base an interpretation of these terms on their knowledge of Reynolds’ metalingual code.With Reynolds’ writing, then, the conflation of poetic language and metalingual code creates a dizzying representation of the musical events. And as the most active element at work, Reynolds’ language relegates the music to a passive state of existence. While such writing is not characteristic of our usual interests as critical music analysts, it does represent a specific interpretive community’s views on post punk music. Indeed, Reynolds’ observations provide an important source of commentary on post punk as a musical and societal phenomenon. Given this situation, perhaps we should strive to align our critical findings with the referential imagery that populates writing such as Reynolds’. If Reynolds’ poetic language can effectively represent the music’s interesting features, our musical theoretical and analytical code ought to address the same qualities. In this approach, then, our methodology might seem more compatible with post punk’s new aesthetic. In short, if we can understand the meaning in Reynolds’ depictions, we should use his experience of the music to our advantage. In my own analysis I accordingly will seek to portray the music’s functional elements as part of the song’s situation.And I will utilize both resources — Reynolds’ writings and the music itself — as a departure for my examination of Sonic Youth’s “Total Trash.”Sonic Youth’s “Total Trash” illustrates many of post punk music’s seemingly ineffable properties. As with many of their songs, in “Total Trash” the band does not seem overly concerned with a lyric content relative to any traditional rock style; instead they place a disproportionate emphasis on instrumental texture. In “Total Trash,” the listener is faced with a complex field or network of sound layers, each vying for attention within the song’s space. When these textural items converge and diverge at seemingly random points, the musical form often becomes unclear. Indeed, the band’s arrangements, at times, seem characterized by their apparent lack of formal structure.These sounds, however, do not exist solely in a complicated musical state. Rather, we need to examine the music in light of the band’s stated interests and objectives. Accordingly, I will explore the band’s conceptual process from both a compositional and technical perspective. Then I will question how, as listeners, we might typically respond to such music in an affective manner. With these guidelines, my analysis will maintain a sense of balance and hopefully avoid two common interpretive pitfalls. First, my analysis will neither place inordinate stress on the song’s musical text nor succumb to its apparent ambiguities. I will try, instead, to maintain the listener’s perspective within the song at all times. Second, my observations as a critical listener/reader will not reach an overly active state, such as Reynolds’, whereby the ‘confusing’ music is supplanted by poetic descriptives. Instead, I will attempt to explain how and why Reynolds or I might select meaning from the musical text. In this way, the area of analytical control will emerge between the musical text and my position as a listener. First, though, I will examine the ideas and theories behind the music itself.If the members of Sonic Youth relate themselves to a punk rock style, how does one explain their approach to musical form?16 The procedures described above, for example, show few traces of a generic punk rock formulation. The band makes no mention of rock’s common language, which consists of such typical components as verses, choruses, bridges, and solos. The band could well be describing a jazz compositional process instead, where “improvisation” around the “same thing” is standard rather than exceptional. Is Sonic Youth, then, that far removed from rock? Even though the band regards its music as inspired “aleatoric” collections of events, we should keep in mind that each song’s language still stands as part of a rock lineage. One can identify, for example, guitar riffs, bass lines and drum patterns as functional devices within the songs. How can we then interpret the descriptive metalingual encoding that Sonic Youth uses to discuss their own music?If one applies Viktor Shklovsky’s idea of enstrangement to the proceedings, the band’s music may be seen as varying rather than displacing rock’s structural underpinnings.17 One might use Shklovsky’s interpretive-literary theory to show how Sonic Youth creates a “poetic” rock. As Shklovsky explains, both prose and poetry contain the same mechanistic units of language. The former operates through a “process of habituation,” wherein we recognize signs and symbols as a matter of routine perceptive awareness. Poetry, however, knowingly enstranges this process of recognition, forcing us to perceive the language under a new set of associations. The components of what might be called rock “prose”, for example, such as riffs, patterns, chords, lyrics, etc., are enstranged in Sonic Youth’s post punk attack. The band’s experimental technique distorts the form of the musical language without replacing its basic constructive function. In short, Sonic Youth de-automatizes rock’ s language. Shklovsky explains how such processes are related to our awareness of an artistic object:Sonic Youth similarly invites the listener to participate actively in the creation of musical form. This declarative procedure is related to that of the minimalist musical style wherein the listener engages in the unfolding of the music. In a sense such a process equally envelops both listener and performer. We might better understand Sonic Youth’s concepts of form as a new way of hearing as opposed to only recognizing punk rock music.“The idea behind punk is that anybody can make music, and they should.”20 While this simple axiom that captures much of punk rock’s Do-it-Yourself attitude explains why Sonic Youth’s approach is punk, it does not align with the way the band members conceive their music. The freedom of their musical approach extends into technical aspects that have moved far beyond punk rock’s basic instrumental applications. Sonic Youth’s intelligent musicianship, instead, almost implies an elitist comprehension of their equipment’s capabilities. For example, the band’s ouevre is characterized particularly by their use of alternate guitar tunings. Sonic Youth designs specific tunings for each song, so that open strings and chords become standards for sound differentiation. How do the instruments function in this system? In a song such as “Total Trash,” the guitars are tuned to G G D D Eb Eb.21 G and D, in this case, are situated as the ‘tonal’ centers of the piece; much of the song’s harmonic motion revolves around these two pitches. Similar pitches, however, are slightly detuned from one another, so that when adjacent strings with the same pitch are played, they emit a “beating” or “wobbling” sonority. The texture varies, then, in relation to the number of concurrent similar notes. As a player incorporates more such notes, wider fluctuations in pitch accuracy and actuality will occur. As a result, the band’s sonorities frequently operate outside a normal conceptualization of the tonal system. Sonic Youth effectively creates a disorienting microtonal variation of rock’s common language.In both Sonic Youth’s live shows and studio recordings, this tuning system often necessitates that the band operate in a complicated logistical manner. On stage Sonic Youth uses different pretunings with virtually every song, which at times has warranted upwards of twenty guitars for a single performance. In the studio, the band layers guitar parts one upon another, escaping the restrictive limits of a live reproduction. “Total Trash,” for example, contains at least six or seven simultaneous guitar tracks. The use of distortion effects in the drums and bass accompanies the guitars, as well, to create a textural web of sound. As a product deliberately assembled in the studio, “Total Trash” is far removed from any unfurbished punk rock sonorities. Consequently, the band’s technique in this song requires that we delve even further into Clarke’s “situational” milieu, where the listener must conform to the music’s terms. Indeed, the musical text, at this point, seems rather daunting to many conventional or routine ‘rock’ concepts and ideas.Any analysis we undertake, then, ought to balance two sets of inclinations. First, our observations should not rely completely upon the language of analyses such as those found in Guitar Player. For these expositions often empower the musical text as an unquestioned technical achievement. Likewise, our analyses should not encourage, at the music’s expense, an auto-referential language such as Reynolds’s. While the journalist’s experience of the music is undoubtedly illuminating, such poetic writing ultimately functions as a separate form of referential notation, removed from the broader based aims of critical analysis. My goal is to reach a qualified meeting ground hovering between the band’s creative ideas and the analyst’s interpretive interests. In this manner we may witness the ways that different communities’ interpretations of sound actually coalesce in the perceptible shape of one song. With “Total Trash,” then, I will ask why we, as listeners, might focus on certain sounds as opposed to others and look to find how we actively process this music.If we as listeners find ourselves, as Reynolds seems to be, overwhelmed by inordinate amounts of sensory data, we ought to contemplate how we formulate meaning in music. To address this issue we should consider how temporally defined objects of sound that we recognize as music cause us to react and respond in certain ways. If we then ask why a song like “Total Trash” provokes certain emotive responses, we may identify what makes the music stimulating. In my analysis I will trace how the arrangement and deployment of constituent parts within the overall sound might arouse certain tendencies on the listener’s behalf. An identification of this correlation between content and response will guide my inquiry of “Total Trash.”For my analytical purposes I will apply Leonard Meyer’s theories, as set forth in Emotion and Meaning in Music.22 I will acknowledge three different yet interlinked ways in which sound stimuli act upon our receptory systems. First, one may say that listeners initially hear a song in relation to their generalized notion of how the music ought to sound. In other words, when we encounter music we have a preparatory set of expectations. Since we anticipate a particular aural experience, we arc predisposed to hear the music in a certain manner. Secondly, one may point to the effects that deviations create in a musical situation. For example, when our preparatory expectations are thwarted or suspended, our senses react and attempt to reconcile the situation. As Meyer explains: “Expectation is always ahead of the music, creating a background of diffuse tension against which particular delays [or deviations] articulate the affective curve and create meaning.”23 Lastly, one may speak of musical perception in relation to our understanding of continuity. Stimuli, deviations and resolutions all work as part of a changing process, shaping musical continuation and, thus, form. If we shift our perceptual focus between both obvious and obscure musical events, then those elements seem to have meaning as part of a whole.One may imagine, then, that the most insightful observations will emerge through this last way of hearing; that of perceptual awareness. In such instances the analytical task requires that one does more than merely recognize the music within a preparatory set of expectations. Instead, as Shklovsky suggests the reader see the text in poetry, I will choose to hear continuity in Sonic Youth’s defamiliarized musical constructions. In short, my analysis will seek to understand the music’s complicated enstrangement.The piece I am delegating as representative of a post punk aesthetic, “Total Trash,” appears on Sonic Youth’s 1988 album Daydream Nation. As Reynolds indicates, many of the record’s songs seem to step out of their physicalities and dissipate into space. In a song such as “Total Trash,” process and change go beyond mere embellishment or variation. Those stylistic elements that Meyer refers to as “sound terms” seem to move past their constructive designations. At times Sonic Youth apparently neglects to situate these “terms” as parts in a chain of logically sequential events. We then must force ourselves to hear these terms in their dizzying, enstranged states. While these sound terms may appear as variations of clearly related forms or shapes throughout the song, in many cases their presence openly frustrates the listener’s efforts to stabilize the surrounding “situation.” In short, the listener may struggle to comprehend the piece’s structural design.While Sonic Youth does traverse wide textural fields in “Total Trash,” the music manages to cohere as a formal unit by the song’s closing bars. As Reynolds describes it, “Total Trash starts as a ponderous punk stomp . . . but ends as a mirage of itself.” Why does he choose to frame the song this way? Perhaps Reynolds recognizes that the textural transformations in “Total Trash” are rooted around certain recurring elements. We may identify these elements through a group of sound terms or riffs that ground the song’s various timbral, temporal, and rhythmic fluctuations. In my analysis I will focus on these riffs as representative markers of the music’s content. For I believe as one is drawn to the riff’s changing shapes and functions, one becomes aware of the song’s other qualities as well. I have not included a discussion of the song’s lyrical content for I feel, as Reynolds seems to, more connected to the band’s use of instrumental sound. My analysis will concentrate, then, on the contrasts between the composite parts that form the song’s three main sections.The 96 bars that constitute the song’s first section revolve around a conventional verse-chorus format. Within these measures Sonic Youth works in the prose language of Reynolds’ “ponderous punk stomp.” The functional devices in this section prepare our initial expectations of what the second and third sections might contain. And, as such, the meanings we first attach to these devices will act as comparative yardsticks for the piece’s remaining sections. The song’s germinal traits unfold in the first 26 bars (refer to Example 1). Sonic Youth employ three separate guitar riffs that anchor the music’s progress. Riffs X and Y are two-bar units, each repeated four times; Riff Z is a four-bar unit repeated twice. In their initial appearances, the three riffs each last eight bars. The last two bars of the section serve to extend Riff Z which leads back into Riff X. In this context, Riffs X and Y form a direct contrast with one another; the former’s eighth note rhythms compare with the latter’s relatively static melodic motion. Riff Z, on the other hand, is a transposition and variation of Riff X’s ascending three note melodic line, and consequently upon its appearance sounds all the more familiar.The next unit of 22 bars begins with a four-bar repetition of Riff X before Thurston Moore enters with the vocal line over guitar Riff Y. Interestingly, Moore’s vocal line behaves as a consequent phrase to guitar Riff X’s antecedent. He uses the same notes (D-E-F#) as Riff X, but in a descending line answering the guitar’s rising figure. This correlation is relative, however, to each riff’s differing harmonic context. When Moore sings the chorus eight bars later, the notes from Riff Z (G-A-B) match the notes of his new vocal line. This agreement creates a sense of correspondence and hence arrival. Sonic Youth completes the chorus as Riff Z extends and leads back into Riff X and another verse-chorus repetition.This second occurrence of the 22-bar unit retraces the previous unit’s steps with one noticeable addition. For the first time Kim Gordon plays a bass line of steady eighth notes on G, which rises in volume within the sound mixture. During Riff Z’s progression, her bass pattern inches towards the foreground and acts as an effective contrast to the chorus’s familiar material. After the chorus (and its two-bar extension), the band diverges into a 16-bar instrumental break. This short segment centers around Steve Shelley’s syncopated drum pattern and Gordon’s descending bass line, both of which improvise around the same rhythm (the first bars of the syncopated guitar/drum rhythm and bass line are shown in Example 1). The foreground movement in these measures occurs primarily around the bass line’s disjunct rhythmic gestures between G and C. In the background, the guitarists play a distorted, sliding line between D and F(?). The band underlays the entire segment with a sustained G chord. After the instrumental break, Sonic Youth finishes the first section with one last repetition of Riff Z, the chorus.Taken as a whole, then, this opening section meets with a generic preparatory set of punk rock expectations. Indeed, the formal similarities between a ‘classic’ punk song such as The Ramones’ “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You” and the opening section of “Total Trash” are striking.25 Both examples feature three different, functional riffs or chord progressions. The bands use the first riff, in each case, as both an instrumental introduction and a connective unit to areas of vocal activity. The second and third progressions correspond as verse and chorus, respectively. In each instance, as well, the bands repeat this basic material three times before launching into their solo/bridge sections.26 In listening to both The Ramones and Sonic Youth, these instrumental breaks give the illusion of suspended progress. In short, at this juncture the musical material heightens our expectation of the vocal line’s return. Finally, each band closes its example with a punctuating chorus. Onefeels that the song has reached its destination.If “Total Trash” actually were to end at this point, a particular set of punk expectations certainly would seem fulfilled. As I have presented Sonic Youth’s discussion of their compositional and technical conceptions, however, we might expect that “Total Trash” is more than a routine “punk stomp.” As listeners/readers, then, we adjust our preparatory set of expectations in anticipation of the song’s probable enstrangement.After the opening section’s resolution, as listeners, we sense we have reached a point of arrival and satisfaction. Following the section’s last chorus, the band even continues once again with Riff X and one detects a probability that perhaps the verse and chorus will proceed as well. The band does not follow Riff X with Riff Y, however, and the middle section continues as a “deviation” for 112 bars. As Meyer explains, a “deviation” is an irregularity that frustrates our normal set of expectations. When its presence continues unabated, the listener experiences increased levels of tension and suspense. How does the middle section deviate from the opening section? Most noticeably, events seem to gravitate towards Riff X’s circular reiterations. The listener follows Riff X as a guide for the section’s development. As the preliminary chart below shows, however, we may hear Riff X’s shape through both its presences and absences.In the first 44 bars the way in which Sonic Youth establishes Riff X through successive reiteration and saturation frustrates our attempts to determine the piece’s directional goals. As Riff X is stuck in its repetitive lock we grow confused over its decontextualized presence. The riff seems disembodied; the band appears unconcerned with Riff X’s linked relations to the song’s other elements. According to Meyer, “anything acquires meaning if it is connected with or indicates, or refers to something beyond itself, so that its full nature points to and is revealed in that connection.”27 As Sonic Youth employs Riff X, though, it does not necessitate any particular sequitur apart from its own pattern. Since the band has saturated the texture so thoroughly with the riff in the first 44 bars, it seems striking when Riff X later drops out in two places. One perceives these breaks as obvious disconnectives. To hear continuity during these moments, however, one may imagine Riff X’ s presence against the song’s other elements.Even more disorienting than these absences, though, is Riff X’s perpetuall