If you click this blog title, you'll be taken to a brilliant instrumental demo from Saosin from their most recent album: In Search Of Solid Ground. When Saosin released their debut album in 2006, every song was woven brilliantly. The album was on constantly in my car on the way to work and back. Those were the days of a suitably long journey from Banbury to Kenilworth, long enough time in the car to listen to a full album, the perfect journey length.
However, those songs were sculpted and crafted over a long period of time. Saosin didn't just hit the mainstream and provide. Prior to that awesome self-titled debut LP in 2006, they'd released an EP called Translating The Name some three years earlier, an instant success on MySpace (back in the day!) and reaped good sales. Three years is a long time to develop an album's worth of tunes, tour, try things out, promote and essentially hone their craft... so when the CD hit the fan, the shit was good.
Imagine that prior to Translating The Name, the band had spent years gigging together and circulating their local music scenes (I'm assuming they did). That's a long development process, which is absolutely essential.
That's rock music, on the other side of the coin I've just watched this short documentary about Laura Marling, whose acoustic folk I've recently taken a love to (live in York Minster is sensational).
The honesty in her music is beautiful. I've always liked what she's been about...dressing 'down' for her Brits appearance a few years ago, bare footed on stage etc. I like the little effort, it puts more emphasis on the music rather than a glittering image distracting from your flat vocals (applicable to most contestants on The Voice, especially the ones with backing dancers). Having said that I hadn't give her music much of a chance before, now however, I'm all over it like a cheap suit.
It's 11 well-spent minutes learning about how Laura came to be so popular. For me, her appeal comes from how raw and gritty her stripped-back, pure, folk songs are. She describes that when she was growing up, her pals and her would put on local gigs because there was nothing else to do! It was their passion so they created a community that enveloped the music. As the hype spreads, the community grows... to such an extent, that by the time she's playing gigs in concert halls and on the streets in India, her unique musical community is strong, true and still growing. That to me is the perfect progression because everything has been nurtured over time in an organic way. Laura will have made her fair share of mistakes along the way, but who cares?!..she has deservedly developed a loyal community of followers who take the time to share her passion.
In all walks of life, mistakes are the cornerstone of a career, without them, how can you learn. In the early stages of a musician's career, those first few EPs, gigging etc.. it's all mental prep as well. If you make it big, you want to make sure you've got the mental strength to survive! It's not an easy lifestyle! Saosin will have learnt their share of lessons along the way, and rather like Marling, those mistakes (whatever they may be) won't be so detrimental as, say, they would be for an artist fresh off the blocks like Lana Del Rey, an artist who is so fresh, I had to google her history to see if she even had one!
I've been avidly listening to Lana Del Rey over the last few weeks. Her debut album is astonishingly good considering it's her first real foray into the cut-throat world of pop music. I've discovered, in 2008, 'Elizabeth Grant' was snapped up by a label and coined her first work two years later and released it on iTunes before buying back the rights, starting over and returning in 2011 under the stage name Lana Del Rey with a simply amazing true debut album called Born To Die. The first single Video Games, a sombre tale of love and it was released in October 2011, with the video receiving widespread adoration on the Internet. She claimed a string of accolades and television appearances in the run-up to the worldwide release of the album on January 31st 2012. In the space of 3 months, Lana Del Rey went from being a relatively unknown US entity to a worldwide smash hit. It took Saosin 3 years to release their debut album to widespread acclaim. It's baffling.
Lana Del Rey will surely have gigged plenty in New York where she grew up, but that natural progression of a few EPs, the breakthrough debut album, tireless gigging, fearless promotion before relishing that hard-earned recognition is not a process Lana seems to have experienced.
Is that a problem?
It depends how you look at it, I'm not complaining because her album sounds amazing. Melodically, each song is captivating. Lyrically, some songs lack maturity, others delve into emotional territories I never know could be captured in pop music. Put together, the work is brilliant though and I rate it highly. Unfortunately, without chatting to her, I can only speculate at her limited opportunity make mistakes and develop her community.
Lana is in that position now where if she goes on Saturday Night Live and puts one foot out of line, spews out a dud note, the world is watching and that is costly. In fact, that very thing did happen.
It's not often you see over 11,000 dislikes on a video... it was proclaimed to be the worst SNL performance ever! She has gone from a relatively unknown lifestyle, to having the potential for hundreds of thousands of tweets of criticism coming through. I personally don't know how she is coping with her newfound success.
Maybe... maybe it has something to do with geographical positioning. Lana grew up in New York, I read that Laura grew up in a village in Hampshire. I have experienced first hand that living in the depths of the countryside, music is the centre of the community. It's a feat of entertainment and tradition. Every pub in our parts continually showcase organic folk, acoustic and indie musicians and they're all relatively well-known names because the community is small, yet strong.
Small in comparison to where I am now, Manchester, where there is a lot more choice for which gig to go to, so many that one small band/musician is diluted by the rest!
But then again I've now just read that at 16, Laura moved to London. So who knows?! All I know for sure is that Lana has set the bar for her forthcoming projects and the pressure to deliver will be astronomical. I'm sure she'll cope just fine, she's leapt of the line on the starting whistle and sprinted to a crazy level of success, without stopping much on the way to enjoy the journey..so she must be talented and capable...but I thought all the fun was in the chase?...
