“Alapathy” – Fenne Lily
We begin with a backbeat: the classic one-TWO-one-TWO that Chuck Berry immortalized seemingly centuries ago. Brisk and archetypal on the one hand, the backbeat here is, at the same time, curiously elusive: note that however much it defines the song’s core, Fenne Lily herself seems to pay little attention to it; the melody is driven instead by words that emerge in a deliberate flow, at half the pace of the arrangement’s urgency. And the song’s other central features likewise manifest in contrast to the backbeat, both the scratchy lo-fi guitar riff, which embodies the “on” beats (i.e., the one and three beats between the backbeat’s two and four) and the smeary, contemplative distortions of the second guitar.
For context it may help to know that Fenne Lily, on her 2018 debut, On Hold, presented as a purveyor of echoey, precise, largely downtempo singer/songwriter fare. This feels like a related but compelling new direction.
As for that flow of words: Lily has a fascinating way of appearing to sing with perfect clarity (even her breath places prominently in the mix), while hypnotizing the ear into letting go of any effort to grasp actual content. Twenty-first-century bloggers and music writers spend a lot of time analyzing lyrics but I’m time and again puzzled by over-scrutiny of words that can often, fruitfully, be heard merely as “language-sound” versus having comprehensible meaning. To me this is not at all a failing on the part of the singer or the song. “Alapathy”–a word Lily invented, by the way, blending allopathy and apathy–feels consequential without any scrutiny at all, the mystery and drive being as much part of the “meaning” as any actual meaning itself, if that makes any sense. This is not to denigrate the lyrics; go read them and figure it all out, if you can, and if that’s what works for you.
Lily is from Bristol, in the UK. “Alapathy” is the lead track on her new album Breach, released on Dead Oceans in September. MP3 via The Current (see note below).
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(MP3s from the Minneapolis public radio station The Current are available in files that are 128kbps, which is below the established 192kbps standard, not to mention the higher-def standard of 320kbps. I personally don’t hear much difference on ordinary equipment but if you are into high-end sound you’ll probably notice something. In any case I always encourage you to download the MP3 for the purposes of getting to know a song via a few listens; if you like it I as always urge you to buy the music. It’s still, and always, the right thing to do.)
Fingertips 