Music with Motif: In sickness and in health

I managed to dodge my family’s flu over Christmas, but unfortunately, I picked up a cold before coming back to university, which has me thinking as I wallow in my bed, about music that reminds me of being unwell. 

There isn’t a track that’s more emblematic of waking up in a noxious state than Danny Brown’s ‘Downward Spiral’ that makes excellent use of sampling ‘Oxymoron’ by krautrock band Guru Guru to create an intense feeling of paranoia and the room spinning before you. His squeaky, tortured voice recounts the other side of a substance binge, with his only learned lesson being not to nod off with the cigarette burning, as he falls deeper into his addictive spiral. In the spirit of Tony Montana before his assassin creeps up behind him, Brown still proclaims his greatness over other rappers, comparing it to how someone on death row cannibalises their final meal. On a comically smaller scale, I always feel like I have a hard time accepting I’m unwell, and as a result, I make myself more ill in the process. 

The song can have an entirely different meaning, and the listener is only treated to the re-interpretation until they finish the record

When thinking about sickness as a metaphor, I find Mark Kozelek’s use of imagery on the velvety, slow-core cut ‘Grace Cathedral Park’ deeply endearing, as he depicts a lonely voice pretending to do normal, sociable things like walking in the park with his lover, but he can’t kid himself to think she would believe he is that normal. His utter disbelief at his lover’s kindness leaves him questioning, “Are you the same with anyone?” and “Why do you treat me like this?” while he asks her to “save me from my sickness” (‘Grace Cathedral Park’, Red House Painters). In the larger context of the album, the song can have an entirely different meaning, and the listener is only treated to the re-interpretation until they finish the record. 

Elsewhere, Kozelek uses sickness as a common motif throughout his work to describe his relationships and is most effective on the ‘Medicine Bottle’ from the Red House Painters’ debut album. In an unreliable monologue about his own tragedy, he can’t accept love as a cure and instead isolates himself from the anecdote, finding the vitality in love the same as birthdays and old friends. Mark can’t control time on his fleshly body, but he can control how he takes his comfort. A bit like an embodiment of Rowland Howard’s narcotic lollipop. In an instrumental representation, the densely collaged work of experimental band Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, ‘Infection’ sticks out to me with the distant vocals, “I do know I love you” drowning in a sea of distortion, erhu and French horns to produce a haunting call for help. 

The constant, numbing blues immerses the listener in a claustrophobic and awkward atmosphere that even the kindest soul would want to get out of

Oddly enough, in the middle of flowery tracks like ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, Van Morrison put a 10-minute, Joycean piece on a distressed visitor seeing his lover who has tuberculosis on his debut album. The constant, numbing blues immerses the listener in a claustrophobic and awkward atmosphere that even the kindest soul would want to get out of. The visitor keeps finding an excuse to leave, but the patient is persistent in keeping them present. An awkward and unfortunate position we’ve all found ourselves similarly in. Following the blues tradition, Morphine’s title track, ‘Cure for Pain’, has more optimism while remaining in the spirit of the tragic character portrait than any other track mentioned here. The final verse has a triumphant declaration that the day there’s a cure for pain, he’ll throw his drugs away, whilst the typically cool saxophones of their sound soar into a cry of victory. I will feel like that when I’m free from my bed.