Ep. 91: Joel Heng Hartse on how Dancing About Architecture is a reasonable thing to do

 

Joel Heng Hartse is the author of the new book Dancing About Architecture is a Reasonable Thing To Do: Writing about Music, Meaning, and the Ineffable." He joins Chris on the podcast to discuss how writing about music is similar to dancing about architecture and they ponder their favorite bands and songs all while figuring out how to continue having a critical eye toward art while still allowing others to enjoy the music they love.

You can find Joel's book here and anywhere you purchase books and you can find out more about his writing and work at his website: https://www.joelhenghartse.com/

You can find Chris's old article on Plankeye's The Spark here.

Related Podcast Episodes:

Ep 90: Brian Doerksen on his song "215"

Ep 85: Singer-songwriter Rick Lee James

Ep 88: Rachel Wilhelm on Composing a Modern Requiem

Ep 87: Harmony Smith—Vineyard Worship Leader, Songwriter, and Pastor

Ep 68: E. Byron Anderson on his book Common Worship

Ep 62: Stephen Backhouse on the Life of Kierkegaard

Ep 50: Stu G on the Beatitudes Project

Ep 26: Zac Hicks author of The Worship Pastor

Ep 47: Dr. Lest Ruth on the History of Contemporary Worship

Ep 81: Rain For Roots 

Ep 67: Singer-songwriter John Van Deusen

Ep 52: Fernando Ortega's The Crucifixion of Jesus

The Three Musical Victories on Sufjan's Carrie & Lowell

Note: This is the third of a three part series further exploring Sufjan Stevens' 2015 album Carrie & Lowell. Part 1 can be found here: The Sufjan Stevens Narrative Spectrum: A Visual Guide and Part 2 can be found here: A Chronological Tracklisting of Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell. For links to other articles on Sufjan's music and Carrie & Lowell in particular please see the end of this article.


Let's be clear: Sufjan Steven's intimate, heartbreaking autobiographical song-cycle Carrie & Lowell is a triumph. As a complete work it is a musical triumph, an out and out victory. It is beautiful and sad and just a great listen.

PostHumous Record Review Week

It's a big week here at PostConsumer Reports.

It's PostHumous Record Review Week.

These are the greatest albums you are probably not listening to.

Usually, it is just little old me writing everything around here (my name is Chris Marchand, BTW), but this week we will be having some guest writers.

I never envisioned PostConsumer Reports to be all about what I think anyway, so I am happy to share the space and get some other voices heard. I am certainly not the only arbiter of thoughts on the convergence of art and faith. I will be contributing two of the articles this week though.

As I said, we will be doing PostHumous Record Reviews. Here is the tagline:
A personal refection on a long-forgotten album in need of a resurrection.

What I have asked my friends to do is write an essay reflecting on an album they think deserves more attention and acclaim, an album people passed by and did not give much thought to when it first came out. These are both critical and personal reflections. I want some analysis of what is happening musically and lyrically but I also want to hear how their own story is bound up in the album. Really, I just wanted them to write on an album they are passionate about. An album where they go "Why don't more people like this? It's amazing!"

I'll be updating this page throughout the week as the articles keep coming out.

Here is the first one, written by me, featuring what I claim is the greatest pop/rock record to come out of the Christian music industry in the 1990's:

Newsboys' Love Liberty Disco (yeah, that's right—deal with it)

"An Awful Sound is Coming Down": 3 Ways Relationships Die in Arcade Fire's "Oh Eurydice"

Hey Orpheus! Don't turn around too soon. Just wait until it's over. Wait until it's through.

The second disc of Arcade Fire's 2013 album Reflektor is about the inception, confliction, and ultimate death of a relationship. 

The backdrop of AF's narrative, of which they only follow in the loosest of senses, is the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Here, (according to the source material) the young man Orpheus, gifted beyond any mortal in the musical arts, woos and marries Eurydice, only to have her die by snake bite on their wedding day. Orpheus follows Eurydice to Hades where he charms the gods of the underworld through his music, convincing them to release her on the condition that she has to follow behind him until they both cross to the other side and that he cannot turn around even once or she will vanish. The tragedy ends with Orpheus turning around just as he has crossed over the river leading out of the land of the dead, failing to realize Eurydice has not yet made it through. She vanishes right before his eyes, a brief tragic tale of love won and love lost.

Why I Cringe Every Time Someone Says "I hate Christian music"

Christian Music is dead! Long live Christian Music!

Last week Christianity Today published an article online by Peter Chin called "Why I Stopped Hating Christian Music". I related to a lot of what he mentioned in the article and would like to offer my own contribution to the conversation on Christian music and the Christian music industry. On top of that, here is a response to an article Derek Webb wrote a while ago on his blog about "Christian Music", which is called "Yes, There is Such as Christian Music: A Response to Derek Webb." In many ways I know there are no easy answers to the questions "Is there such a thing as "'Christian' music" and if so, what is the criteria for it?" There are compelling arguments on both sides of the issue and lately the side for getting rid of the term altogether seems to have the most traction. I, however, come down on the "Yes, there is such a thing as Christian music" side and would like to present my case as such over the course of these two articles. Your feedback is welcome...even though I realize things could get ugly...

Reflektor: A Listening Guide

For those of you reading along with my series on Arcade Fire here is a brief outline/listening guide to their 2013 album Reflektor, which turns 1 year old next month. 

Let's get right to it.

The album has a basic subject/narrative undergirding each song:
We all live in the "Reflective Age", an age of passive reflection. Some of us have succumbed underneath the oppressive weight of this age and some of us have overcome it, living as rebels and revolutionaries and outsiders within it, forever fighting against it. For more on the concept of the "Reflective Age" please see this article.

The Explanation and Inspiration Behind Arcade Fire's Reflektor

OK. Are you all ready for this? It is time to reveal a bit of my obsessive side. There are some things in my life I think about nearly every day, and the subject I am about to write about over the next month is something that has been on my mind a lot over the past few years, but is a subject that has occupied a great deal of my headspace especially in the past year.

I feel a bit like a conspiracy theorist by even saying this, but I see things in the work of semi-Canadian rock band Arcade Fire. I see things man, lots of things. I see connections, lots of connections—reflections, even. Connectors and reflectors. All over the place. Not just in their last album, which was called Reflektor, but throughout ALL of their albums (to catch a glimpse of what I mean by the connections go here and here and here).

Wakeup!—Uncovering Arcade Fire's Grand Narrative

This week Arcade Fire's pacesetting 2004 gut punch of an album Funeral turns 10 years old and is being canonized all over independent music outlets (Pitchfork and Stereogum) and next month their fourth album Reflektor turns 1 year old, and thus it is now time for PostConsumer Reports to enter a season of heavily focused Arcade Fire articles. 

Today's post: Uncovering, discovering, and illuminating Arcade Fire's grand narrative, the one story they've been trying to tell us for ten years, the one paradigm they've been trying to get 'us kids' to sing along to.

My 3 Sentence Review of Coldplay's Ghost Stories

Coldplay's new album Ghost Stories contains almost no compelling musical ideas (except for maybe 3 tracks: "Magic", "Midnight", and uh...if I'm being generous "A Sky Full of Stars), manages to make the breakdown of a relationship sound dull, and is the first Coldplay album I actually regret purchasing (and I have all their albums). Consisting of songs with mostly 2 or 4 chord chord progressions, uninteresting ambient sounds, and a slew of synths and drum machines,* they hardly sound like a cohesive band anymore but instead a synthetic studio production. The main question is this: why was something so sub-standard even released into the world at all? 

Why Coldplay Will Never Be A Great Band (hint: it's the lyrics)

Look into his eyes...look deep into his eyes...

This is part 2 of a 2 part series on the work of Coldplay. You can find part 1 here: Coldplay Produces Shallow Pop Music and I Don't Even Care [but maybe I'm starting to]

The Story

Have you ever felt like you had a connection with a celebrity? Like in some bizarre alternate universe you would be friends with them, like the same things they liked, hang out with them, and have your kids play at the park with their kids while you talked about the mundane burdens of adult life? Well I have. One of those connections was with Chris Martin of Coldplay.