Cinematic Sequencing
How Electric Youth's music parallels the act structure of theater and film
The synth-pop duo Electric Youth are probably best known for their song "A Real Hero." The song spotlit an immortally memorable scene in Drive. The Driver takes Irene and her son through a sunset-lit drive through the LA River, framing one of the few scenes of peace in an otherwise persistently violent movie.
"A Real Hero" is off of Electric Youth's debut Innerworld. Released in 2014, I think Innerworld contributed to what is a very en vogue synth-pop framework for a lot of popular music. Electric Youth is a little more robust than a contrived synth-pop act. They are very cinematic in their songwriting and even album sequencing, even scoring a deceased film on the album Breathing.
Album sequencing in general does resemble the format of film or theater story telling. It's harder to discern listening to an album digitally or on CD, but on vinyl you can hear what is usually an intentional choice to introduce the listener to a new "act" when they flip the record over. I've always thought that "The Camera Eye" as the start of the B Side on Rush's Moving Pictures album is a strong introduction to the second act.
But I have only owned Innerworld digitally, and it still resembles an act-based structure. Maybe not three-acts as is conventional, but still noticeable setups, confrontations (of a kind), and resolutions.
"Before Life", the instrumental opener on Innerworld functions as a kind of overture. It begins gently, with wobbly synths, and then becomes more grandiose with the piano chords. And it falls off into "Runaway" which could be understood as the introduction of the main character. "Before Life" is the title credits, "Runaway" is the first scene introducing the main character.
Innerworld has a consistent lyrical theme of individual growth, children coming of age, youth finding first love, enduring love. This is pretty clear in the midsection of the album. "Innocence", "Without You", "If All She Has is You", all cradle the story arch of young naive kids into older human beings faced with the heavier weight of loving another person. Even "Final Girl", only included as a bonus track on the Deluxe Edition, functions within the theatrical form of the album.
I didn't go into this entry thinking I was going to write about music that I think commits to a three-act dramatic structure like movies or plays. I was planning to write about how Electric Youth-style music just makes me think of mist and fog. But here it is, music causes many thoughts.
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