Escorted by a Beautiful Monster
Dying in Three-Part Harmonies
Last week, a friend of mine posted a song from the score for the TV miniseries Over the Garden Wall. I never heard of the series but learned it was created by the guy that made Adventure Time which I know to have some popularity with the "there's high art in cartoons" crowd--people raised on Adult Swim.
The fourth song on the soundtrack is a song called "Pottsfield C.M." I'm sure the title refers to something in the series. The music echoes what I figure chorale was like in the 2nd Great Awakening.
The instrumental bed of the song sounds like a standup bass and a sawing fiddle and maybe an accordion supporting a choir. The lyrics and vocal delivery are a combination creepy and jubilant.
I listen to a lot of different music, but no matter the genre there is usually a through-line of uncanny valley and constantly competing emotional content. Instability. A healthy degree of skin crawl. And "Pottsfield C.M." made me think of other chorale-type songs and variations of hymns that are at once sad, joyful, horrifying, and completely beautiful.
I was introduced to the Wailin' Jennys cover of the Scottish traditional "The Parting Glass" through the movie Wildlike. Wildlike is a great example of a "hey it's that guy!" movie. But anyway, their cover is a capella, lyrics centered by their impeccable three-part harmony.
The content of the song is transparently sad. It's a song about leaving, simply. But the words of the song surrounded by the harmonies adds an excessive emotional weight. I've seen versions of the song with a quicker tempo, and maybe there is an additional emotional saturation to the Wailin' Jennys version because it is so deliberately paced. Slow enough that each stanza is like another friend or loved one leaving.
"The Parting Glass" is more uniformly sad, but the song "Here in the Vineyard" by Anna & Elizabeth is sad plus some spook. The lyrics are very spiritual: devotion to god, mortal toiling to arrive at a death valuable to the lord.
There are two harmonies in the song, supported by what sounds like a harmonium. The harmonium is kind of an emotionally uncomfortable instrument. It resembles a piano but sounds like a wind instrument. One of those things that does not act as it should.
Chorale music like this has a loving tension to it. All the harmonies sound like companions who are surrounding you with love and support but this is as they are also escorting you to your last moments.
One of the best scenes in O Brother, Where Art Thou is with the sirens. Of course the song is performed by Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, and Gillian Welch. And I think the scene predicts some of the darker content the Coen Brothers will take up in later films.
"Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby" adds even more discomfort to an equally beautiful vocal performance. And as far as companions go, the sirens (or Harris, Krauss, and Welch as the vocalists) are more stealing than leading the three prisoners to their doom.
Harmonies are objectively incredible. It's so impressive to hear how talented singers are able to convey shifting emotions through voice only. There's also kind of a monstrousness to it, where individual harmonic spaces overlap on each other to create the big beast of a chordal relationship. You know each part is sung by one person but you hear it as some emergent organism that you can't see.
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