Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Little Dawn

I’ve long considered Ted Leo one of the nicest guys in indie rock (I mean, based on reputation and his Twitter account; sadly, I’ve still yet to actually meet him), but when it comes to the most well-known track off Shake the Sheets, Ian put it best in the notes for his “Over Our Bodies” mix:

Ted Leo seems like a standup guy. So what the holy hell is he doing writing a song that veers uncomfortably close to being pro-anorexia (yes, “Ana” and “Mia” are not girls)? I get that he’s probably just inhabiting a character, but giving a lyric that’s about how starving yourself is somehow noble such an anthemic chorus makes me very, very uneasy.

“Me and Mia” was the first Ted Leo song I ever heard. He and the Pharmacists have long been favorites of mine, and “Me and Mia” is one of the best TL/Rx songs. But there’s a bit of shadow hanging over it. The reason I first heard it was because my erstwhile girlfriend was listening to it in a bout of self-loathing. I gradually understood that it was about eating disorders, but I didn’t really pick up on the more unsettling bits at the time. A few months (or maybe a year or two) later, after I’d become a Ted Leo stan, I tried talking to her about the band and found out that it was the only song of theirs she had ever heard. A search of the “Me and Mia” tag on tumblr brings up a lot of “thinspiration” posts and gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach.

Well Little Dawn walks on, and she thinks she don’t belong under starry heights
So take a sigh as long as the war’s been going on in your heart tonight

And I guess that’s an extended intro to why I find “Little Dawn” so powerful. Because it’s not only catchy enough to rival “Me and Mia”, but while both songs contain calls to action, “And if you want to make it right, go on and put your plan in motion” isn’t unsettling in the same way as “Do you believe in something beautiful? Then get up and be it” is, at least given the different contexts of the songs. Especially considering that the former line just appears once, in the opening verse, whereas the latter is the opening of the chorus. And where the chorus of “Me and Mia” contains more troubling themes, that of “Little Dawn” offers only comfort:

But on the days and nights you try to breathe
and you can’t believe you still walk the streets
Stretch out your weary hand to me - it’s alright

And if you’re not content to just believe
And if you don’t consent to just let it be
Stretch out your legs and dance with me all night

I mean, I don’t like to use the word very often, particularly when talking about music, since I don’t want the term to become any more cliché and devalued than it already is, but this is a very cathartic song for me.

It’s alright.

He quietly repeats that simple phrase 149 times in the song’s last two minutes, by my count. And, at least while it’s still going, I can’t help but believe him.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Biomusicology (Demo)

“Cassette 4-track, alone in a basement, Washington, DC, 1999.”

oneweekoneband:

“Biomusicology” – Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
(Words/music: Ted Leo, available on The Tyranny of Distance, Lookout! Records 2001)

The cover of The Tyranny of Distance features a large section of ocean with a solitary whale, and the relative size of the whale only makes the ocean seem much larger. It’s an appropriate cover, as the sea, water, and swimming make numerous appearances in the album’s lyrics. These appear throughout “Biomusicology” as well, most significantly in the single line in German, a quote from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde (or T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” which quotes this same line) that translates to “wide and empty – the sea.” This, along with the other images in the opening verse –the “vastness of pavement” and “barrenness of waves” make me think back to the wide and empty sea on the album’s cover.

Of course, the song doesn’t end alone and empty in the middle of the ocean. It offers two strategies for confronting the void. The first, as it is in many of Ted Leo’s songs, is to continue on in the face of a large obstacle. Like Sisyphus and his boulder, when faced with a meaningless task, one must derive meaning from the act itself. “In the midst of all of the action / maybe only there found satisfaction,” Leo sings at the end of the song’s main verse. It fits in with the different locations and scenarios listed before it, perhaps some of the different sights and stops on a touring band’s itinerary.

The other refuge in this desolate sea is music. Right after the Wagner quote (itself from a “song,” I suppose), its songs that “down there have a purpose” beneath this empty sea. It fits into the touring band narrative implied above, but more importantly it fits the way that we consume music as fans. During hard times, I turn to my favorite records whether for inspiration or just to turn my brain down to low for a little while. Songs have a way of feeling like something to cling onto in the gigantic ocean of life, even if just for a few minutes, and in the song’s final lines Ted Leo equates singing and swimming in consecutive lines.

Many of the songs on The Tyranny of Distance relate to the portmanteau in this song’s title – of music feeling like a part of our DNA. But it’s this final verse of “Biomusicology,” as the cymbal crashes and echoed guitar almost sound like a sea raging against one’s boat, that Leo delivers this message best, in a voice with an uplifting timbre and full of confidence.

All in all,
we cannot stop singing.
We cannot start sinking.
We swim until it ends.
They may kill
and we may be parted.
but we will ne’er be broken-hearted.

More on Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

Music as something to cling to in life: why this might be my favorite TL/Rx song (well, that and everything else about it).

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Biomusicology

Day 27 – A song that you wish you could play

There are SO MANY songs I could say for this, but I’ve been loving this song as of late, and I just realized I hadn’t put A SINGLE Ted Leo/Rx song on here these 30 days, which was a travesty.
 

You know what we could use?

SOME TED MOTHERFUCKING LEO.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Shake the Sheets