Momentary Greatness: Rilo Kiley

There is a danger in dissecting the single moments in songmost pregnant with beauty and meaning, particularly in stating the obvious. The purpose of this study is to isolate the unknown moments that help take a good song and make it extraordinary, not simply fellate an artist by pointing out the obvious.

For instance, one example that doesn't necessarily warrant an entire post is the Smashing Pumpkins' song "Day Dream" which is filled with novelty for the band's first album: it is sung by bassist D'arcy Wretzky, it features lush strings and an acoustic guitar riff. These all work to make the song so much more intimate and delicate than any others on the album, and there is a tiny moment that assists in the ultimate sonic landscape; near the end of the song, the cellist knocks the tip of the bow against the cello, making just a hollow wooden knack of a sound. Coming from a band so adored (hehe) for its penchant to perfectly polish in production, that very moment juts through to remind us that these are not robotic monsters performing these songs of 28 guitar tracks. These are people, one and all.

In general, the goal of this little feature is to document as many of these moments as possible; these little itty bitty things. However, that simply is not comprehensive enough. There are so many great moments in song that contain the full capacity to uplift, to sink, to destroy and to grow that we must be accepting of every single one, even if they do involve a level of stating the obvious. This very well could become somewhat tedious, evolving (or devolving) into the feature's equivalent of filing taxes. 'Could' is the gem of that sentence, because the inaugural such "duh" moment is true, pure magic.



Artist: Rilo Kiley
Album: The Execution of All Things
Song: "A Better Son/Daughter"
Time:1:35
Type:Seismic

Greatness: Here's another fault of picking the 16-inch Chicago-style softball moments: there is not much to say once you've heard the song. The moment doesn't affect the song as much as it decimates it, completely dynamiting the soft, old-tyme radio stylings of Jenny Lewis' vocals into a massive, expansive Hollywood epic of a song. The slow waltz beat of the song matched with the steady beat of snare transports the song from the stylings of an indie rock group into a melancholy march of the dead. The lyrical sentiment being put forth agrees for the most part, more or less stating that life is nothing but a struggle to make everyone you know love and care for you and for you to appear as such. The second-person perspective adds to this misery, particularly because Lewis sings the beginning lyrics from the first person; the "you" never sounds convincing enough to be anyone but Lewis herself. She is striving to make these problems something of a universal history for the modern American human, yet no one is fooled enough to believe that she is singing to another person save her own reflection.

What is remarkable about this moment is that it is satisfying in two ways: 1) the simple bombast is pleasurable enough and 2)from the moment the song begins you know it's coming. The album this song is featured, the erratic The Execution of All Things, has so many rough and odd moments that it is almost welcome for such a thing to be telegraphed, much like the also-wonderful title track.