nixsight

This week, I was preoccupied with the darker side to female vocalists – that hard, cold and dangerous part of a certain sort of woman, that can save your life if it’s on your side, or damage you badly if it isn’t.

It might seem like just another excuse for me to go on about Regina Spektor, or Drugstore – and in fact, one of the songs that I’ve shared by the latter would fit nicely here, but I didn’t want to repeat myself, so I’ve gone for something else.

It Wasn’t Me – Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins

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Jenny Lewis wants you to know that she denies all responsibility. Even though, as time goes on, it becomes apparent that she’s protesting just that little bit too much.

The deal with Jenny Lewis is that she looks just that little bit too hot to be singing clever post-folk/country music. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of very attractive women producing thoughtful music – in fact, I tend to have a weakness for them.

But look at Jenny Lewis. She looks like Isla Fisher’s hotter sister – as if that’s even possible. And that makes the songs that she sings with a darker undercurrent all the better – she sings like she looks, like the unnervingly cute daughter of a minister, who is only toying with this country/western style until she can get back to singing hymnals. A girl who is maybe capable of a little naughtiness – but that would never be difficult or challenging.

And please don’t think I’m being terribly old fashioned about this – everything about Lewis’ image and persona is in place to encourage this idea of down-to-earth sweetness, from the sumptuously coiffed hair to the floral cutesy summer dresses.

So you don’t expect her to flout responsibility, or to be so dang obstinate about it.

I guess, in fact, that you are supposed to underestimate Jenny Lewis. Maybe that’s the thing.

So when she sings a song like this one, with it’s undercurrent of petulant rebellion, and an almost “just you dare contradict me” tone to it, it is even more effective.

The Queen And The Soldier – Suzanne Vega

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I have had a long love affair with the songs of Suzanne Vega. She is the perfect mixture of fragility and strength, the ultimate New York waif – a compact elfin urchin that looks softer the closer you get, but with a pebble hard focus at it’s center.

It’s Vega, and specifically this song, that inspired me to post three songs with this recurring theme. And this song gives this post it’s title, too!

“The Queen And The Soldier” doubles up as one of my other favourite musical things – a song that is also a story. I don’t know as many of these as I’d like to, but I haven’t heard many as striking and deceptive as this. The soldier in Vega’s story is an officer and a gentleman, and he is also the only man who has the nerve to call the Queen on her regal iniquities.

There follows a peculiar love affair, that seems to be heading somewhere positive, but the Queen, in a tragic and insightful observation of a particular personality type from Vega, has a hidden flaw that won’t allow her, or the soldier, a happy ending.

It’s dated maybe a little, but I still love this song.

Night Terror – Laura Marling

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Laura Marling is a tiny, delicate, pretty young woman, who writes and sings stuff that is mature way beyond her years, often dark, and has a throbbing musical maturity to the sound that matched perfectly with her skewed lyrical allegories and dramas.

But ultimately, she is a tiny, delicate thing.

I mean, look at her.

So how come when, in this song about shapeless, existential horrors, or something else that has just gone over my head, she says:

“If they want him, they’re gonna have to fight me.”

… the listener has absolutely no trouble feeling the weight of the threat warning?

There is a strength there – a little scary, indeed, and possibly going hand in hand with an instability on the part of the character that she’s playing. One of the songs on the same album is, after all, about manic depression and mania.

But it’s still strength, and it comes in a soft package.

Similar to, but not really, Andrex.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s songs. If you agree, or disagree, with, or don’t really understand, any of this, as always please comment!