Listen!
By King Rick Solomon

The voice doesn’t, in point of fact, actually know you. This is hard to accept.

Because it really does seem, when you’re listening to the bulky headphones late, late at night, that somehow, in some Twin Peaksy way, rock stars have been peeping in your sunless apartment windows. They’ve been cold-calling forgotten ex-girlfriends, reconstructing torn-up ATM receipts, tailing your taxi in that shadowy Impala a block back, sitting down to corned beef and cabbage with your charmed mother. It seems like the whole of life has led up to this freeze-dried moment, sitting cross-legged on this kitschy carpet, as this voice sings away the same ragged laments that seemed suffocating, just two and a half minutes before. Doesn’t it?

And it isn’t about an idol, a totem, a preening sex god in leather pants with one foot perched on the monitor. It’s about a buddy. It’s about the purest distillation of platonic love, from a coddled stranger in another universe, encoded in binary and then released again, poured through these plastic earmuffs like rainbows and unicorn breath. It’s about a voice that somehow knows everything true and just and terrifying, every answer that still seems to defy logic.

The voice becomes the best friend.

Coldplay has, quite possibly, the worst band name in recorded history. They have the combined edginess of a hamster. Chris Martin is one of the most defiantly generic lyricists of his generation, the lovechild of Joey Ramone and K.C. (of Sunshine Band fame). I never meant to cause you trouble/I never meant to do you wrong/Oh but if I ever caused you trouble/Oh no I never meant to do you harm”??? You can’t rhyme a word with the same word, guy.

They’ve become decent-enough songwriters, sure, but after 3 albums the formula has already laid itself bare—sensitive ballads that build to crashing peaks, thoughtful mid-tempo question marks, and blissful major-key anthems. Beyond that, they’ve refused to stretch in any direction. Do they ever want to rage? Do they ever want to write songs about fucking? Aren’t there any other notches in their emotional spectrum, outside of melancholy and bliss? And yet despite all of this, they are (aside from their big daddy U2) the biggest rock band on the planet.

Bright Eyes has a problem with—actually, there’s little that young Conor has a problem with. He’s actually pretty sweet. I guess if I had to find fault, he could do without those droopy eight-minute ambient noise pieces that he opens his albums with, the ones where he’s really saying, “I’m so sweet that you won’t turn me off, even though you know you want to.” Though getting better with age, he still drops into preciousness and self-indulgence and self-loathing far too easily (but I’m sure that’s part of his appeal for the satchel-toters and suicide girls, the Hello Kitty set). His electronic album was just this side of weak. His pronunciation gets too pronounced, too stylized and pretentious, even when he’s trying on a regular-ole drawl. Still—he might be the most important solo artist on the indie scene, and the fawning worship he inspires sometimes seems unreal, too intense. Indie boys want to mope like he mopes, and indie girls want to rip off his faded cowboy shirts with their teeth.

Phish was oftentimes phenomenal (when they weren’t enraging), but were they worth the life of ragtag devotion shown them by thousands of tourheads? Four unimposing goofballs put cheesy lyrics together with musical chops, secret ambition with a killer lighting guy, prog structures with endless jazzrock. They ended up with something that became religion to many people. Kids actually gave up their fucking lives to see every show, drove by night, parked in the lots and set up tables, to sell overpriced beer or gooballs or garlic grilled cheese or some shit, moving just enough product to buy the night’s ticket, the night’s drug. These kids lived like Dickensian orphans, just to hear a vaguely-nerdy jam band from Vermont.

These guys are the voices. These guys are the best friends (had you already guessed?).

It’s not anything native to the music, to the songwriting, to the actual sonic structure that’s most important here. Those things are important, yeah, but at heart it’s something so much more visceral and electric. It’s just the voice, quite simply. There’s something bleeding, dripping from the voices of these men, some pure texture that instantly passes on every bit of humor and memory, curiosity and experience and infinite sadness that hides in their skulls. You hear the voice, you know the man. Intimately. Watch the faces in the wash of red and white lights, eyes closed in silent prayer, listening to the gentle voice of Trey Anastasio. See the swaying of an entire stadium, cellphones aloft, while earnest Chris Martin sings one of those crashing ballads. Close your eyes as Conor Oberst belts the last-ditch high notes, the teenager as angry duckling, yawping into the breach on “If Winter Ends”.

There is nothing more intimate possible, within the structure of pop music, than the union between the voice of one man and the ear of another. It’s so simple that it becomes electric. In a way, the music almost gets in the way, creates an interfering medium (singer --> song --> listener), where the actual sound of the voice, and the humanity that’s transferred, is perfectly direct (singer --> listener). These men burn their brightest through their voices, and all that’s required of the listener is to listen. The audience doesn’t have to parse meanings or understand chord changes, they just have to be present. The desperate love that passes from one side of the speakers to the other is so tangible, so delicious and free that it’s hard to recognize a gap between the idealized union and an actual friendship. The voice is there to make you feel less alone. The voice won’t ever argue semantics, or eat your Thai leftovers, or take a few-months break to figure her shit out. The voice is a blessed constant, one of the very few.

And all you have to do is listen to the voice. It’ll become your best friend.