Caribou – Yeti
So, this is a song that essentially pulls a tasty rabbit out of a hat halfway through…actually, it’s quite close to the end but it’s magic anyway. Like it completes everything just near the end, makes the whole make much more sense, and makes you re-evalutate the past (the immediate past that is, the bit that you just heard a minute ago).
It’s a cool trick to pull, and is nice. You can hear a sample (almost certainly without the magical moment in question) over here.
Basically the song is quite droney, very rhythmic and urgent, pulsing slowly upwards if at all. There’s an almost static landscape, like the old cartoons where, to save time, you get characters running past constantly cycling pattern of tree, rock, tree, rock.
The landscape is fairly pretty, and pretty intricate, but it just surges forward like a river. It’s a rich tapestry, there’s a lot of noise and flow underneath the surface, not all instantly visible. Close listening is valued.
Anyway, toward the end, just as you’re expecting no more progression or change, you get something new.
And boy is it special.
Like falling off a waterfall.
Or perhaps just having a waterfall splash over you.
Well, technically it’s just a descending arpeggio, on some gorgeous rhodes-esque electric piano/organ.
Oh man. It just kind of glows in the darkness, like a fairy, leading you back to the path after you’ve been lost in the woods.
You see, the music reeks of nature, of woods and rivers and floods and deluges, and it almost seems to tell a story (not that I ever listen to the words). And it’s just such a climax. Everything peaks and then falls down onto the softest ground imaginable. Wrap up warm, and have a big cup of cocoa by the fire.
Only you don’t need to because the fire in your heart from that goddamn rhodes will make you nice and toasty.
The other song I always think of when talking about resolutions in music, the climaxes that recreate the whole song in their execution is Kid A by Radiohead. That bass line at the end, feels so at home, like it’s been there all along. It adds depth to the mix, what was once a little bouncy, soft and playful piece, suddenly has a rich depth, and full bodied red out of a light white. You realise, all of a sudden, what the main beat of the song was…it fits together around that bassline.
But you only hear the bassline for about 8 bars maximum…the song ends with it, completes at the last moment, and doesn’t give you any more of that satisfaction than the bare minimum.
It doesn’t just leave you wanting more, it gives you time to re-evaluate. I think it does slip retroactively into your mind, like a kind of internal audio time travel. You can still hear it all even after it’s ending. It’s like letting you fill in the gaps, join the dots and reify it in your head.
Maybe that’s all just nonsense.
But yeah, it’s interesting. I can’t think of an equivalent in any other art form….though I must admit, I’m not trying that hard.
Thoughts?
