Punch Brothers' "Another New World"

Last month (the last day of the year, actually), I listened to Punch Brothers' Ahoy! EP.  I'd listened to it only a few times before, so listening to it then was the first time I really caught the name "Annabel Lee" in "Another New World."  The only other "Annabel Lee" I know of is the Edgar Allan Poe poem, so when I listened to Ahoy! a few weeks ago for my Collection Audit project, I transcribed the lyrics and compared them to the Poe poem.  The situations in each poem are different, but there are enough similarities to make me think that the song (written by Josh Ritter) took at least some inspiration from Poe.

In Poe's poem, there's the recurring line "In this kingdom by the sea," and "Another New World" is about maritime exploration.  There are lines about "set[ting] the course north" and "study[ing] the charts" to find "another new world at the top of the world."  In the song, Annabel Lee is a ship, and in the poem, she's "a maiden," but the connection between an Annabel Lee and the sea is a significant one in both works.

The speaker in the poem mentions the "love that was more than love" that he had with Annabel Lee, and the same sort of thing seems to be in the song.  The singer/speaker calls the Annabel Lee "the most beautiful ship in the sea."  Together, they're "happy to think back on all we had done," and he stays in "the loving embrace of her hold."

Both speakers are eventually separated from their respective Annabel Lees by means that are somewhat similar.  In the poem, "the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee," and in the song, the Annabel Lee is trapped in the ice and snow of the arctic.  The singer/speaker has to use "her mainsail for timber" and says he "burned her to keep me alive."  The cold is what does both of them in, either directly or because it leads to something worse.

Nevertheless, both speakers dream about Annabel Lee after her demise.  The speaker of the poem says that "the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee," and the singer/speaker of the song explains that "sometimes at night in my dreams comes the singing of some unknown tropical bird / And I smile in my sleep thinking Annabel Lee's finally made it to another new world."

Aside from the narrative, there are also some similarities in the poetic elements (although that doesn't really demonstrate Poe's influence in particular).  Both have some lines (or parts of lines) that have repetitive sounds.  There's alliteration with Gs in "So I said, 'All I got, all my guts, and my God'" in "Another New World," and in "Annabel Lee," there's some alliteration with Ls in "And this maiden she lived with no other thought / Than to love and be loved by me" and "we loved with a love that was more than love."  There's some internal rhyme in "the waves that once lifted her sifted instead into drifts against Annabel's side" in "Another New World," and in "Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee" in "Annabel Lee."  I should note that I'm quoting from my own (possibly incorrect) transcription.  I did look up some other transcriptions, but I thought their accuracy questionable.

Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode"

A couple months ago, I happened to think of the line "Strummin' with the rhythm that the drivers made" in Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."  A few lines before that, it's mentioned that Johnny used to "sit beneath the tree by the railroad track," so I'm assuming that the "drivers" there are steel drivers, hammering in the railroad spikes like John Henry did.

Then it occurred to me that what Johnny B. Goode is doing here is sort of the opposite of a sea shanty.  Sailors sang sea shanties to coordinate work; the rhythm of the song synchronized the workers.  Here, Johnny's taking the rhythm of the workers and - through extracting its rhythm - practicing his strumming.

Herman's Hermits' "The Most Beautiful Thing in My Life"

A couple months ago, I discovered some ambiguities in the lyrics of Herman's Hermits' "The Most Beautiful Thing in My Life," specifically the second half of the second verse:

She glows to me, arose to me
A shining star she is by far
The most beautiful thing in my life

Almost each one of these lines could be parsed a different way.  First, I found just "arose"/"a rose."  So either "she... arose to me" or "[She's] a rose to me," almost the same as the "A shining star she is by far" in the next line - listing metaphors for the girl.

But once I transcribed that part of the lyrics, I found something else.  The last two lines could have a break in two different places.  It could follow the line break: "A shining star she is by far / The most beautiful thing in my life," or it could be "A shining star" (either a metaphor like "a rose" or "A shining star arose to me" inverted as "Arose to me a shining star") and "She is by far the most beautiful thing in my life."

2016 Musical Projects

Most of my musical focus this year is going to be spent on doing Collection Audit again.  Every other year since 2008, I've attempted (and so far been successful) in listening to all of the music in my collection.  Since 2014, I've also been writing about things I notice while listening to everything.

The only new project I started is Lyres, Harps, and Cymbals.  Last year, I got a box set of Bach's complete sacred cantatas, and I started LHC mostly as a way just to write about them.  I'm also writing about other church music, and I revived the Hymnal Habitation project that I did from late 2012 to early 2015 (although it's not called Hymnal Habitation anymore).

The other projects I'm doing are just continuations of what I've already been doing:

• Cover projects - last year, I started a bunch of projects where I try to learn every part to every song by a particular band.  I'm well aware that I'll probably never finish (especially because this year I'll be more focused on Collection Audit than these projects), but even in just attempting to learn all of the parts, I've discovered some interesting things I probably would have been oblivious to otherwise.
• Verulam Cover Project - The Zombies and related bands (Argent, Colin Blunstone, Rod Argent)
• APP Stereotomy - The Alan Parsons Project and Keats
• Pendleton Sounds - The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and SMiLE (and maybe others eventually)
• 10538 Orchestra - Electric Light Orchestra
• Beatle Audit - The Beatles
• February Album Writing Month (FAWM) - the challenge to write a fourteen-song album in February, which I've participated in since 2010 (and completed in various degree every year, although I think I deserve credit only for the last four years, when I actually recorded fourteen songs).  Because it's Leap Year, the requirement might be fourteen and a half songs this time; that's what they did in 2012.
• 50/90 - the challenge to write fifty songs in ninety days (from 4 July to 1 October), which I've also participated in since 2010.  I've never actually finished, but I've still written some pretty good stuff for this project.  For the last two years, I've suddenly run out of momentum once July is over (I think I must get stuck in the FAWM mindset).

Because I'm doing Collection Audit, I've put the Classical Music Queue and the Cover Project Listening Schedule on hold.  Once I finish Collection Audit (or once the year is over, whichever comes first), I'll restart both of those.

I'm going to try to continue to have weekly posts here, but because I'm doing Collection Audit, that's where I'll be writing the most.  I do have some things that I noticed last year that I never got around to investigating, and if the schedule works out, I'll be able to listen to them for Collection Audit and write about them here.