Last of the Red Hot Free Fridays

And here we are at the final weekend where I receive a Free Friday from my $work as a reward for surviving the pandemic.  It’s been awesome having a 3-day weekend every other week for a few months, and I shall certainly miss it when it’s gone.  But all good things come to an end, as they say, and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.  Tune in next week to see how I manage that.

Fight the Current ... or Ride the Waves (depending)

A charismatic speaker starts espousing a crackpot theory.  The theory is based on an obscure book published by a little-remembered figure with strong ties to the Church and who is generally recognized to have no scientific credentials.  The speaker offers “evidence,” most of which is just drawings he himself made, and mostly just asks open-ended questions, because that way he can’t be held accountable for telling outright lies.  Everyone agrees that the public is likely to be misled by this person’s dangerous ideas, which could cause irreparable harm.

I bet that scenario sounds way too familiar to you in today’s world.  But I’m not talking about an “anti-vaxxer” or a climate-change-denier.  I’m not even talking about Tucker Carlson, surprisingly.  I am, in fact, talking about Galileo: the “little-remembered figure” was Copernicus, and the “crackpot theory” was heliocentrism ... the idea that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around.  You may think I’ve twisted the facts, but it’s absolutely true that most of what Galileo offered as evidence were his own drawings, and it’s also true that (at least for many years), he avoided making statements of fact which might ruffle the feathers of the Catholic Church.  And it was quite a pervasive belief that Galileo’s ideas were putting the very souls of the public in jeopardy, which was considered far more insidious than merely putting lives at risk.

I present this story because we seem to be getting confused these days by what “skepticism” actually means.  And, admittedly, people such as the aforementioned Fox “news” host make it very difficult.  One the one hand, Tucker presents himself as a classic skeptic: hey, he’s just asking questions, right?  And people attack him just as they did to poor Galileo, just because he questions the accepted wisdom (of medical science, of climate change, of systemic racism ... take your pick).  Poor, poor Tucker—you see what happened to Galileo, right?  Convicted, imprisoned, ultimately died there.  That could happen to Tucker!

Obviously I don’t intend to defend Tucker Carlson, and obviously I don’t think he compares very favorably to Galileo.  But I think it’s important that we don’t dismiss Carlson because he asks difficult questions and demands proof: that actually is what a skeptic is supposed to do.  I think it’s important we dismiss Carlson because he doesn’t offer any answers and refuses to accept proof when it’s handed to him on a silver platter.  Sadly, people like Carlson give skeptics a bad name, and make us more prone to dismiss people who might actually have legitimate points.

But I don’t think we can lay the blame for the decline in skepticism squarely at the feet of Tucker Carlson and his ilk.  The sad truth is that skepticism, like almost all tools for good, is used quite selectively by the majority of people.  For a simple example, buried right in the middle of a very long (but interesting) New Yorker article, we find this nugget:

While acupuncture is widely accepted as a medical treatment in various Asian countries, its use is much more contested in the West. These cultural differences have profoundly influenced the results of clinical trials. Between 1966 and 1995, there were forty-seven studies of acupuncture in China, Taiwan, and Japan, and every single trial concluded that acupuncture was an effective treatment. During the same period, there were ninety-four clinical trials of acupuncture in the United States, Sweden, and the U.K., and only fifty-six per cent of these studies found any therapeutic benefits.

Obviously there’s some bias going on.  But I bet your instinctive reaction was to assume that the bias is on the part of the Asian studies: your scientific skepticism of course leads you to question those results.  By why not question the results on the other side?  Is it perhaps possible that the Western studies are biased against finding benefits that they don’t really believe in?

I’m not saying that’s definitely the case, of course—in fact, given my views on balance and paradox, you’ve probably already guessed that I personally think there’s some bias on both sides, and that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  But I find it interesting that most people that I know would naturally assume that the people who couldn’t find any evidence were more reliable.  On the one hand, you have scientific proof that a thing exists; on the other, you have no proof of anything at all.  And yet most people reading this will believe the side with no proof.  Why is that?

The answer, of course, is that it isn’t.  If I show you studies that show that vaccines work, and studies that show that they don’t, you’ll believe the positive ones.  On the other hand, if I show you studies that show that vaccines are linked to autism, and studies that show they aren’t, you’ll believe the negative ones.  The truth of it is, you’re just going to believe whichever studies you were predisposed to believe in the first place.  But, see, that’s not how skepticism is supposed to work.

Paul Kurtz, sometimes called the father of secular humanism and author of The New Skepticism, wrote:

Briefly stated, a skeptic is one who is willing to question any claim to truth, asking for clarity in definition, consistency in logic, and adequacy of evidence.  The use of skepticism is thus an essential part of objective scientific inquiry and the search for reliable knowledge.

Question any claim: even the ones you’re already “sure” are true.  Demand logic and evidence.  These are great criteria.  Surely idiots like Tucker Carlson crumble under such demands.  But other areas are more gray.

The problem, as I see it, is that our Western viewpoints often lead us to the conclusion that, “we can’t prove that it works, therefore it doesn’t work.” Now, if you think about this for a second—and, remember: one of the things skepticism tells you to demand is consistency in logic—you immediately see that this is a ridiculous conclusion.  Try to turn in that deduction in any college class on logic and you’ll get a very disparaging grade: the argument is not sound.  The conclusion does not follow from the premise.  And yet you most likely accept that it’s true, as long as it’s in reference to something you’ve been taught is pseudoscience.

Let’s take one of my favorite examples: chiropractics.  Now, statistically speaking, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance that you believe that chiropractics is complete hogwash.  Why?  Because of the lack of scientific evidence to support it, of course!  We can’t prove that it works, therefore it doesn’t work.  Q.E.D.  Of course, there are studies that show it does work.  But those are flawed studies, obviously.  They’re biased.  They weren’t rigorous.  It’s amazing how much effort we can put into debunking studies we don’t want to believe, and how little effort we put into debunking studies we do want to believe.  Because all those studies that said that chiropractics don’t work?  You didn’t question them at all ... right?

The silliest thing about this debate is that this is one of those areas where “works”/“doesn’t work” isn’t really a valid way to look at the problem.  Chiropractic is a medical treatment, like a drug, or a medical procedure that might be performed in a hospital.  And, I’m pretty sure we all understand that those types of things work for some people, and don’t work for others.  Some of that has to do with the quality of the drug manufacturer, or the expertise of the medical personnel performing the procedure, but most of it is just because we’re all different on the inside.  I mean, we’re all the same, but we’re also all different.  You and I might have the same medical condition, and we might take the same drug, in the same dosage, at the same times of day and in the same relation to when we eat or when we sleep, and it still might be the case that the drug works for you, and not for me.  People’s insides are just funny that way.

So, likewise, it’s silly to try to say that chiropractic works ... you can only say that it works for you, or that it doesn’t work for you.  It happens to work for me, but I have to tell you, I approached it with a very skeptical attitude.  I went to my first chiropractor, assuming it wouldn’t work.  I made the doctor explain exactly why it was going to work, and I didn’t believe a single word of what he said, because he was spouting off bullshit about chakras and energy pathways and shit like that that is very obviously not true.  And yet ... it worked.  It didn’t matter that I didn’t believe in it, and it didn’t matter that the doctor obviously had no idea how it worked.  It worked ... for me.  And I still go to a chiropractor today, several decades later.  I don’t go for every ailment, and I have certainly found complaints where it didn’t work, but, for many things (especially as I get older), it continues to work, despite all “evidence” that it shouldn’t.  Actually, since I want that consistency in logic that Kurtz was talking about, I did eventually find a chiropractor who approached the practice from more of a kinesiology standpoint, and he finally was able to make it make sense (mostly).  But none of that really matters, because, at least for me, it just works.  (I also enjoy it when people, confronted with this simple fact, try to “explain” it by saying that the relief is “all in my head.” “That’s fine,” I typically respond: “that’s where the pain is.”)

So, if you’ve tried chiropratic, and it worked, then you can say it worked for you ... but not that “it works.” Likewise, if you’ve tried it, and it didn’t work, then you can say that it didn’t work for you ... but not that “it doesn’t work.” And, if you haven’t tried it at all, I don’t think you can intelligently say much of anything.  You just don’t know.  And your scientific skepticism ought to demand evidence, which you can really only gather by trying it out.

Of course, when it comes to things like vaccines or climate change, the answer isn’t so easy.  You could just listen to everyone on TV, and most of the government, who are telling you that the COVID vaccine is safe, or you could listen to idiots like Tucker Carlson or the Russian bots posting to your Facebook account, or the rest of the government, who are telling you it’s not.  But, honestly, your scientific skepticism should be telling you not to take anyone’s word for it.  Sadly, unlike chiropractics, this is not something you want to settle via experimentation.  You have to read about it, and you have to read lots of different sources.  You have to listen to what scientists say about the various vaccines, shutting out what the media personalities and the politicians are saying, and try to evaluate which ones make sense.  There will be scientists on both sides, of course.  But, even without any scientific training, it’s amazing how simple it can be to read what a scientist is spouting and either say “yeah, that makes sense” or “what a nutbag!” In my experience, it’s actually quite rare for even a very well-trained scientist who happens to be a nutjob to able to hide this fact from you.  It does happen, mind you, but it’s rare.  And even when it seems like there are sane voices on both sides, usually there are a lot more sane voices on one side or the other.  Now, that still doesn’t always land you on the right side of the debate (see also: Galileo) ... but it’s a pretty good start.

So be skeptical, but be skeptical of both sides.  When you hear someone swimming upstream against the conventional wisdom, hear them out—at least until you can determine if they’re a nutjob (or a Tucker Carlson, who is really more of a douchebag than a nutjob).  Don’t be afraid to come to a conclusion that puts you at odds with what “everyone” else is saying, but also make sure you have facts and evidence and logic to back up that conclusion.  None of this is simple.  But, then again, life rarely is.

Waiting for ideas to harden

This week, vacation time is all over, and I’m set to make my second nighttime trip to the airport for the week.  So I’m not even particularly feeling up to writing you a nice non-post.  Sorry.

Hopefully next week will be a little easier.  I have a decent queue of post ideas piled up at this point—all I need is a bit of time to get them transmogrified from abstract to concrete.  Here’s to aspirational concretization.

Candy Apple Shimmer I

"If All You Dreamed Was New"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

“Dreampop” has a lot of different meanings to different people.  Partially that’s because the genre (or subgenre, or style, or however you want to characterize it) is so flexible.  If it gets hard or punky, it becomes shoegaze; if it gets dark and gothy, it morphs into darkwave.  Infuse it with some electronica and you get chillwave; cross it with trip-hop and you end up with Hooverphonic; crossbreed it with worldmusic and you arrive at Dead Can Dance; feed it recursively back into shoegaze and you somehow come up with Mazzy Star.  It’s many things to many people, and people quibble over the where the lines are (is Lush shoegaze? or dreampop? or both? or is all shoegaze really a form of dreampop?¹), but there’s one thing pretty much everyone agrees on: it all starts with the Cocteau Twins.

And the Cocteaus, as we’ve noted many times throughout this series, started out as goth.²  And goth, as we’ve also discussed,³ is not, contrary to popular belief, all about darkness and death, but rather about high drama and style over substance (which may or may not use images of darkness and death to achieve that).  Well, dreampop is, in a weird way, what you get when you drain the drama out of goth music and you’re left with just the style: the glittery, ethereal, atmospheric style.  In a way, dreampop is a bit like the ambient version of goth:⁴ much of it just floats along, without any strong sense of melody or rhythm—the Cocteaus in particular have a lot of this sort of music.  But, then again, it is called dreampop, after all, and there’s a good deal of it which is quite catchy, even “hooky.” So you can see why people have different opinions.  But, ever since my initial discovery of the Cocteau Twins via an import version of their 1986 masterpiece Victorialand,⁵ I’ve been fascinated with the genre.  Out of the more than 1500 albums I own, the single artist with the largest quantity of titles in my collection is the Cocteau Twins.⁶  So we really have to start there.

For this mix, I wanted to emphasize the poppier side of dreampop.  That’s a little tough with the Cocteaus, who I often describe as angels singing in a pink fog.  For this mix, though, I didn’t want to feature the muted pinks, but rather the bright, glittery reds (which is what the mix name is aiming at, be it ever so obliquely).  For the Cocteau Twins, the first thing that really brought to mind was their most radio-friendly album ever, Heaven or Las Vegas.  It’s my second favorite Cocteau album, and it has the excellent “Cherry-Coloured Funk,” and that has the bright red I’m looking for right there in the title.  Plus you can almost make out a word or two here and there: something about good news, I think, and ... a tiger, maybe?  “In Our Angelhood,” on the other hand, is quite different: from the Cocteaus’ second album, it’s definitely not goth, but it’s not quite the ethereal dreampop they’d be famous for by the next couple of albums either.  Not only can you make out some of the words (note: this does not make them make sense), but some of them even rhyme: “like he said he would ... in our angelhood.” It’s also quite fast, at least for them, and I can’t help but think it was songs like this that really inspired a lot of the dreampop I showcase here.

In the “well, duh” category, I couldn’t avoid paying homage to perhaps the second biggest influence on modern dreampop: David-Lynch-inspired Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack music.  In this case, I went with the iconic Twin Peaks soundtrack, specifically “The Bookhouse Boys,” which is just as moody and atmospheric as the rest of that album, but also expansive and echoey, with just a bit of jazz flair.  4AD supergroup This Mortal Coil had to be here as well, showcasing as it often did different members of the Cocteaus paired with members of Dead Can Dance, Xmal Deutschland, Wolfgang Press, and Colourbox.  “Another Day,” which of course is off my all-time favorite TMC album, It’ll End in Tears,⁷ features Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteaus, Martin McGarrick (who often played for Siouxsie) on cello, and Gini Ball (who played for everyone from Siouxsie to Soft Cell to Psychic TV) on strings.  It’s a spare arrangement with a quite intelligible vocal performance from Fraser, and it flows beautifully into another classic, off one of my best beloved albums-to-fall-asleep-to, Shepherd Moons.  Enya can also be ethereal and nigh-indecipherable, but the lyrics of “Caribbean Blue” are as crystal clear as the ocean she’s singing of:

If every man does all he can,
If every man is true,
Do I believe the sky above
Is Caribbean blue?

Gorgeous.  (This song also provides our volume title, as it happens.)  And, finally, while Bel Canto is not as well known as the other old-school dreampop bands I chose here, this electronica-adjacent trio from Norway had some magnificent gems in the late 80s and early 90s, of which “Unicorn” is one of the best.

For the more modern dreampop representation, I waffled on several tunes from Devics and Trespassers William to represent the LA scene of the late 90s/early 00s.  In the end, I went with TW’s amazing rendition of “Rainbow Connection,” which I felt was a beautiful closer, and decided reluctantly to let Devics wait till next volume.  Because there’s a buttload of mid-2010s stuff I just had to get to: the psychedlic guitar work of Deerhunter’s “Carrion,” the surrealist synth of Taken by Trees, showcased in “Horizon,” and the dreamy power-pop of Scavenger Hunt, especially as epitomized by “Dreamers.” But there are two choices I wanted to highlight.  First, also pushing the “pop” half of the dreampop label, we have Flora Cash, another of those bands whose name sounds like a person.  In reality, they are Kosovo-born Shpresa Lleshaj and Minneapolis native Cole Randall, who met on Soundcloud and then began working together in Sweden.  They have some gorgeous intertwining of female and male vocals, all backed by strong melodies which are very definitely pop, but also containing synth and guitar work that provides the dreamy atmosphere.  “California” is my absolute favorite of theirs, and I chose it to break open the middle third of the volume, opening it with a bang.  Secondly, there’s Chromatics, from Portland, whose magnificent “Cherry” was in many ways the inspiration for this whole mix.  While dreampop has been a passion of mine for many years—decades, even—I’ve been mostly focussed on its more gentle sides, its expansive sides, its darker sides, its psychedelic sides.  But when I heard Chromatics perform in the Twin Peaks revival series, I thought “man, I’ve got to hear more.” And then I heard “Cherry,” and I realized that I’d been a fool to downplay the pop side of dreampop.  Because there are a lot of amazing tracks to be experienced, and “Cherry” is one of the reddest, glitteriest ones in the bunch.

For a bit of infusion of darkwave, I went with one of the brightest tunes from Unto Ashes (of course, bright for them is still pretty dark for anyone else), “Scourge,” and a fairly standard outing from Love Spirals Downwards, “Mediterranea.” We’ve heard from both bands before.⁸  For a bit of shoegaze, I went with the inimitable Warpaint: “Keep It Healthy” is pretty light for them, which, again, is pretty heavy for anyone else.⁹  For a touch of ambient, I had to go with Australis, mainly because they have this great track, “The Gates of Reality,” but its Enigma-reminiscent whispered vocals, occasional though they are, make it entirely unsuitable for the other places I’ve used them.¹⁰

Candy Apple Shimmer I
[ If All You Dreamed Was New ]

“Hannah” by the House of Love, off The House of Love [Butterfly Album]
“Cherry” by Chromatics, off Cherry
“All the Way Down” by the Primitives, off Pure
“Cherry-Coloured Funk” by Cocteau Twins, off Heaven or Las Vegas
“Carrion” by Deerhunter, off Fading Frontier
“Horizon” by Taken by Trees, off Other Worlds
“The Gates of Reality” by Australis, off The Gates of Reality
“Unicorn” by Bel Canto, off Shimmering, Warm & Bright
“Scourge” by Unto Ashes, off Moon Oppose Moon
“California” by Flora Cash, off Nothing Lasts Forever (and It's Fine)
“The Bookhouse Boys” by Angelo Badalamenti, off Twin Peaks [Soundtrack]
“In Our Angelhood” by Cocteau Twins, off Head Over Heels
“Jennifer” by Eurythmics, off Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
“Making Mirrors” by Gotye, off Making Mirrors
“Another Day” by This Mortal Coil, off It'll End in Tears
“Caribbean Blue” by Enya, off Shepherd Moons
“Mediterranea” by Love Spirals Downwards, off Idylls [Reissue]
“Keep It Healthy” by Warpaint, off Warpaint
“Dreamers” by Scavenger Hunt, off Scavenger Hunt [EP]
“Over the Rooftops” by Gene Loves Jezebel, off Discover
“Rainbow Connection” by Trespassers William [Single]

Total:  21 tracks,  79:53

Which leaves us with the usual run of at least moderately unexpected choices.  Most of these are 80s-throwback tunes: songs that were stretching out for dreampop, possibly without even realizing it.  The single exception to that, though, is our one and only bridge, Gotye’s “Making Mirrors.” While Gotye is of course most famous for his smash hit “Somebody That I Used to Know,”¹¹ he dabbles in trippy little gems like this one, which I felt was the perfect bridge from the poppier middle third (characterized by “California” and “In Our Angelhood”) into the slower downslope of This Mortal Coil leading to Enya leading to Love Spirals Downwards.

It’s bridging from the Eurythmics, as it happens, who are typically thought of as alternapop or possibly new wave.  But I always saw “Jennifer” (with her orange hair and green eyes and her dress of deepest purple) as something different for the normally very synthpoppy Eurythmics.  It’s slow and deliberate, and it sets a very particualr mood that somehow seems more important than whatever Annie Lennox is actually singing about, and I think that really captures the essence of dreampop.

But the iconic 80s track¹² I wanted to open this mix with is House of Love’s “Hannah,” also the opener on their second self-titled album, which is now usually just called the Butterfly Album (similarly to the Beatles’ White Album or Weezer’s Green Album).  House of Love was in the same movement as the Stone Roses (as well as many others like Blind Melon), which I would say grew out of some of the 80s bands like the Church and Echo and the Bunnymen and the Dream Academy.  Sometimes this is referred to as “neo-psychedelia.” But, honestly, it’s pretty much just dreampop.  “Hannah” even has much the same structure as “I Wanna Be Adored”: a very slow fade-in, echoey guitars, reverby vocals, a repeated refrain (House of Love used “this is not my sky” whereas Stone Roses used “I don’t need to sell my soul”), slow verses and choruses that eventually build to a harder breakdown which drops back down to downtempo again ... the songs were even released within a year or so of each other—almost certainly too close for one to be a rip-off of the other, but also too close to be a complete coincidence.  And, while I really dig “I Wanna Be Adored,” I think “Hannah” is the superior offering, and that’s why it needed to be the opening here.  It really sets the tone for what follows.

Admittedly the other two are a bit more of a stretch.  Gene Loves Jezebel is sometimes described as new wave and sometimes as post-punk (which is quite strange, since inasmuch as “post-punk” means anything—which isn’t inasmuch of much—it means something nearly diametrically opposed to new wave¹³), and Wikipedia actually has the balls to call them goth, which ... no.  Just, no.  What they are is a bit unusual style, a lot echoey, ringing guitars, and healthy dose atypical vocal performance.  It is proper dreampop?  I suppose not, though I always found something dreamy in it.  Besides being a fascinating story of maybe the only time in history that identical twins ended up hating each other, Gene Loves Jezebel is a wonderfully 80s phenomenon that produced an iconic album (Discover) which is sadly now mostly forgotten.  But I felt that “Over the Rooftops” deserved to be resurrected here.

Last but not least, the Primitives are emblematic of the cusp bands that lived in that brief period when the 80s weren’t quite over but the 90s weren’t quite sure who they were yet.  Another band that some try to cram into new wave while others think they can be squeezed into post-punk, the Primitives were, along with the Darling Buds, and (to a lesser extent) Transvision Vamp, female-fronted alternapop that was glittery and synthy and very definitely not the sort of stuff I would eventually collect on Sirenexiv Cola.  That was all serious and folky—Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette and Liz Phair—but this was not deep at all.  This was just fun, and poppy, and occasionally just the slightest bit trippy.  Like Hooverphonic, Dead Can Dance, or Blondie, it was rare for you to hear male vocals from the Primitives, but, when you did, it was nearly always worth it.  Oh, don’t get me wrong: the best Primitives songs are still the ones Tracy Tracy sings—“Way Behind Me” and “Crash” and “Keep Me in Mind” and “Shadow” and “Out of Reach” and “Summer Rain” and their cover of “I’ll Be Your Mirror”—but when Paul Court took the mic, it was always different and memorable.  He sang “Carry Me Home,” and “I Almost Touched You,” and especially “All the Way Down,” which is the one I chose here to highlight just how dreamy they could be.  It isn’t ethereal at all, and it isn’t quite psychedelic, but it does have something that is evocative of the dreamiest dreampop, and I thought it worked particularly well here.  I put “Cherry” first, of course, but this wasn’t a bad follow-up.

Next time, we’ll crank it up to eleven.

__________

1 The proper answer, of course, is that shoegaze is related to, but separate from, dreampop, and, while early Lush is shoegaze, there’s really no way you could call Lovelife anything other than dream pop.

2 In particular we noted it on Penumbral Phosphorescence, where we featured one of their very goth tracks from their first (very goth) album.

3 Again, see Penumbral Phosphorescence.

4 For way more discussion on ambient, check out Shadowfall Equinox III.

5 For more on that, see Smokelit Flashback II.

6 I own 11 of the Cocteau’s albums, for those who are curious.  Number two is Jeff Greinke, who is featured so heavily throughout Shadowfall Equinox, with 8, and then 7 each for the Cure, INXS, and They Might Be Giants.

7 See Shadowfall Equinox II for a deeper dive into my affection for this album.

8 Unto Ashes on Penumbral Phosphorescence I and Dreamtime I; LSD on Smokelit Flashback V, Shadowfall Equinox I, and Rose-Coloured Brainpan II.

9 We first encountered Warpaint on Dreamscape Perturbation I.

10 Such as Mystical Memoriam I, and Shadowfall Equinox IV.

11 Which I used on Rose-Coloured Brainpan II.

12 While it was technically released in 1990, I still consider this very much an 80s song.

13 See also Totally Different Head for deeper dives on the crossovers between punk and new wave.