TheBrit and TheYank

There are three types of album title: the first is the mundane, simply drawn from one of the songs on the album (such as Massive Attack’s Blue Lines); the second is slightly more interesting, being unrelated to song titles, eponymous or perhaps signifying the meaning behind the album (e.g. Tanya Donelly’s Lovesongs For Underdogs). That leaves us with album titles taken from lyrics, the best of the three, because until you’ve experienced the lyric, you may still be unsure as to why the album has been given its name.

Kristin Hersh’s acoustic album, Strange Angels is one such album. The way she deploys its title is effective because she rarely adheres to conventional song structures, which can make her work difficult to listen to. In particular the twisting of similar sounding words and phrases from one line to the next, but also due to the lack of obvious choruses. Listeners need to become familiar with the motion of each song to uncover its organisation, using repeating motifs, sounds or words as hooks on which to hang conclusions.

Shake is unexpectedly the centrepiece of Strange Angels because it concentrates ones attention on the use of those two words. Coming in the middle of the song, they arrive unheralded at the beginning of a line. Boom! What follows stretches through the remainder of the song and the rest of the album, lingering in the background of one’s thoughts. Furthermore, because Shake leads on seamlessly from its perky predecessor Stained, it’s eventual evolution into a separate entity makes it more remarkable. No wonder she uses the term Strange Angels for her musical benefactors.

Kristin Hersh - official website
Kristin Hersh - Strange Angels (Amazon UK, Amazon US, iTunes)

I didn’t expect to be writing this so soon.

Ever since musicians made it onto the internet I’ve often been frustrated that many don’t leverage it to their advantage. My particular pet peeve is with blogs. Few musicians appreciate the value they give to fans by telling them what is happening. A timely, regular stream of blog posts, followed up by replies to comments is better than heaps of press releases. It’s better than a Facebook fan page too.

But this is old news, because while blogs are still crucial, there’s something around that’s more organic and immediate. Twitter is where it’s all happening now. Oh yes. If you’ve read our About Us page, you’ll know already the benefit it’s brought to our lives. Musicians, as it turns out, are discovering it too.

Whilst Twitter started out as a simply way of telling everyone “what are you doing?” users quickly discovered that were actually no rules to what you had to post in 140 characters of less. The social media gurus who try to formulate policies, laws and etiquette haven’t a dingbat of a clue about Twitter. So we can ignore them and move on.

Musicians therefore started to use Twitter as a means of posting quick updates, regarding songwriting, upcoming releases and tour dates. Others began to incorporate their life outside of music. This aspect is crucial because fans like to know everything. I’m particularly fond of all the weird and daft things that Kristin Hersh’s family gets up to. It’s all about providing a connection - to feel part of an extended family.

Quick interlude: Amanda Palmer wrote this on her blog yesterday

if you want what i have to offer, great.
if you don’t, great. there are people who want it.
i don’t need to make you love me anymore.

which sounds awfully like what I wrote here. (By the way, there’ll be more from her later in this post.)

She’s already been using Twitter to give free tickets away to gigs, to organise impromptu meetups, and most importantly, pillow fights.

Back to Kristin Hersh. A couple of days ago she asked “Could you share some of your experiences and opinions re: live music?” and, based on the replies she received, it appears that there’ll be things afoot regarding rebuilding live music “from the ground up.” This indicates the immediacy and the value of connecting with fans. Fans know what they want. Simple.

I promised more Amanda Palmer, didn’t I? Well, yesterday whilst on the way to the WorkPlay Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama, she became bored with van travelling and decided to hop onto Twitter to answer questions. Here’s a picture taken by Kim from Vermillion Lies to prove it.

At the end of which she tweeted:

I fucking love the future. Fuck everything. Fans => twitter => artist => twitter => fans. End of story.

I am of course disappointed that she didn’t answer my question (which was all intellectual, naturally, and about her lyrics - mopey sod that I am) and that she uses a Blackberry because she couldn’t type fast enough on an iPhone, but I’ll still love her way after my bones turn to dust and the sun dies. Why? Because she gets everything about music and Twitter is just one more way of channeling her passion.

So, if you’re a musician tempted to try out Twitter, or you’re one already on Twitter, but not using it too much, give it a proper try and embrace your fanbase. Furthermore, because Twitter grows personal networks, your fanbase is likely to grow too. It’s daft not to.

Perhaps it started with the music press micro-categorising: turning each small collection of artists into their own ultra-specific genre? Maybe that gave us the desire to focus on the musicians we really care about. And we tune out everyone else? Bob Lefsetz perceives this ‘narrowcasting’ as the future of music, which is entirely sympathetic with the (realised) concept of sponsored funding of musicians by their fanbase.

Inevitably, in his post, he mentions the relatively poor US sales of U2’s new album and that people have stopped talking about their music - it’s all about everything else. And, if my Twitter stream is anything to go by, he’s right. The interest at the moment is on pre-sales concert news and merchandise sales.

So narrowcasting gives a way for musicians who care about their music to connect to the fans who matter. For those there will be a future, but for those who go after the money, maybe not because we’ve all wised-up to the “sale.”

What about the idea of free music? If a band gives their music away for free, perhaps because they have financial support from their core fanbase, how does that impact on the exposure of the general public to their music?

It’s something I wondered about until two days ago, when Kristin Hersh remarked that the last 50FootWave release was downloaded over two million times.

I don’t call that narrowcasting.