Reasons to Be Cheerful: The Joggers

I want to inaugurate a new occasional feature on the blog entitled "Reasons to Be Cheerful." These are going to be things that I particularly like: the songs or albums I just can't get out of my head, the movies that just blew my mind, the most excellent cream puffs at Beard Papa. Things of that nature. Basically the sort of little things that make life good, especially the living part of it. Sound a little too Pollyanna-ish for you? Yeah, it probably is. But it's a Friday afternoon, I'm in a good mood, and I'm looking forward to a nice weekend with some decent weather. Oh, and I'm listening to...

The Joggers, With a Cape and a Cane

I'll say right off that I don't have the critical vocabulary of the real professional critics out there. I can't sit here and pick out all of the unusual instrumentation choices, or tell you if the guitar parts are really complex and difficult to play, or how the mix muffled the upper registers, or if somehow the melody is contrapuntal to they rhythm. (I have no idea what that last phrase means. I read the word "contrapuntal" some where and just mashed it in, probably in a completely inappropriate way. Any musically inclined readers of this post probably want to kick me in the nuts right now, and frankly I can't blame them.)

Anyways, my point being: I lack the technical language to break down the music of bands I like. I have to rely more on how the music sounds to me, how it makes me feel, what it reminds me of. I can't tell you what it is about the Joggers that gives them such a unique sound, what ways they must tune and play their instruments to get such a distinctly off-kilter sound. I can tell you that it's very different from any of the other indie rock bands I've heard, in a way that I didn't quite "get" at first. But on repeated listenings, I've become absolutely hooked.

The thing about the Joggers is this: on first listen, it sounds somehow off. Like the notes are wrong, out of key. The songs are sharp, not smooth. They almost sound antiseptic, like the aural equivalent of drinking lemon juice. Another comparison: when I was a kid, I took piano lessons. Obviously I wasn't as dedicated as I should have been. See the previous paragraph for all the evidence in the world that I failed myself in the music education department. Still, I had my moments where I'd be playing a song and it was going well, it sounded smooth and proper, like a real song and all of the lessons were paying off and my teacher, Mrs. Hardy, was going to be proud of me next time I went for my lesson. But bear in mind, I wasn't actually a very good pianist and those stretches never lasted long; eventually, I'd hit a wrong note that would sound all the more out of place for coming in the middle of all the right notes. That note would be glaringly, gratingly obvious and in my mind, it seems like that wrong note was always on the one key on the piano that was not only the wrong key, it was also out of tune. When you first put the Joggers on, they sound like that out-of-place note.

And yet...and yet. I can't tell if it's in spite of the wrong-note-ness, or because of it, but there's something so beguiling about their sound that it drives me crazy. It could be a contrast thing, because the Joggers have a remarkable facility with hooks; from out of nowhere these choruses emerge in the songs that are amazingly catchy. Take "White Madam," for instance. It starts off with a jittery, scratchy guitar chord dominating through the beginning of the song. (The best comparison I can give that most people would be familiar with is the guitar on Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Give It Away.") It's urgent, nervous, I've-had-too-much-coffee-and-I-just-had-some more. But then, at the 1:50 mark, the chorus kicks in for the first time and that edgy sheen drops away and you fall into this great groove in the song. But before you get too comfortable, a jagged vocal bridge pops up, start-stop-start-stopping ("It's the only time we get / It's the only time we get"). Somehow, though, the chorus once again emerges at around the 3:00 mark to carry out to the end of the song. And that hook, man...it's just so great, so inviting that it pulls me right in. So maybe there's something to the Joggers' sound as being sort of a doling out of rewards: we'll give you some great hooks, but we're going to mix it in with some rough stuff and make you work to get to the good stuff.

And yet, the more I listen, the more I think that it's all the good stuff. It's like riding a rollercoaster. You ask anyone what the best part about the rollercoaster is, it's the rush and the whoosh as you're falling down that first big drop. But the real best part of the rollercoaster isn't that drop, it's the split second right before the drop. The tension and the excitement is at the highest point (literally and figuratively, I suppose), and the thrill of what's about to happen is even greater than the thrill as it happens. It's the last moment where you can consciously think and experience the ride before the adrenaline takes over. The whole ride up to the top of the first drop raises that tension. You hear the clanking of the chain dragging the rollercoaster cars up, you feel your weight settle in as the chair leans back, you look down on the ground below and get a sense of just how high up in the air you are...and you're slowly going higher and higher, which means that the eventual drop is going to be that much further. There's a crucial relationship here: the higher the tension, the greater the release.

So that's why I think the Joggers work so well. A lot of times when you hear about a band that has great "tension and release" it tends to be something like Mogwai, where the songs are much longer and at their finest they might drag out for 10 minutes or more, with several movements that rev up the tension further and further until the catharsis. But the Joggers play 3-4 minute indie rock songs, with verses and choruses. They don't play extended, ominous instrumental sections. And yet they're still able to create this tension as a product of their sound, which leads to the release in the hook. Not only that, but they do it well. That's why I think, as I said just before my rollercoaster digression, that it's all good stuff. I've overcome my initial instinct, which was, "This doesn't sound right, it sounds off, what's going on?" to marvel at the skill. These guys are brilliant, absolutely brilliant at establishing tension, and that's what makes their hooks so rewarding: the release is that much greater after the efficient compression that came before it.

Okay, I'm looking back at the this post and realizing that this is the sort of rave review that will result in absolutely nobody going out to check out the Joggers. "I love these guys, they sound out of tune like a wrong note!" Yeah, I'll call the record store and tell them to stock up. And yet, in all of the music I've consumed over the past several months, the Joggers have been one of the albums that I just keep coming back to. It's not the easiest album to love on your first run, but there's something about it, from the beginning, that connects and only gets better on repeated listens. It's a reason to be cheerful.